I need help narrowing down my list of colleges to which I’m applying. Currently there are 18 on my list… meaning a ton of supplements and application fee$. Please help me narrow down my list by pointing out downsides to any of the colleges on the list or similarities (EX: college x and y are very similar in terms of a, b, and c). I’m not going to put my safeties as I have a solid four I am keeping, but the following are my matches/reaches (no particular order):
Brown
Uchicago
Columbia
Duke
Gtown
Harvard
UNC Chapel Hill (out of state)
Uva (out of state)
UPenn
Yale
WashU St Lou
USC
Wake Forest
Vanderbilt
Congratulation on your hard work and success! I looked at your other threads to see stats, etc. It does not seem like financial aid is a consideration, so I’ll answer with the assumption it’s not.
It’s great you have four safeties. These 14 are practically reaches for everyone. In RD, most of them have acceptance rates down in the single digits. Vanderbilt listed its 25/75 ACT range as 34-36. That’s very difficult. You are well qualified and can succeed at all these schools, but they get several times more applications from qualified students than they can accept. It’s just supply and demand. You could be accepted to any of them, based on your full application, essays and all, or could very conceivably be denied/waitlisted to all of them. Would you be happy to attend all of your safeties?
UNC, UVA, Wake, and, I believe, Wash U and and USC have double-digit RD acceptance rates. Please note though that Wake’s was down to 25% this year, and the school places a lot of emphasis on visiting and interviewing (students can do a Skype interview). Have you visited? Can you visit? If you want to do a Skype interview, those go fast and are cut off in December (I think), so sign up now. The same is pretty much true at Wash U. UNC is very tough because it only accepts 16-17% of OOS applicants. UVA is probably more doable, but applications have surged in recent years because it is EA and OOS students can easily throw in an application I’m not sure how recent events in Charlottesville will affect applications for next year.
In terms of cutting the number, which ones really excite, inspire you? Keep those.
You would receive an outstanding, world-class education at all these schools. Students, faculty, and staff will be topnotch. They all have world-class facilities. So you might consider quality of life, as YOU define it as a way to pare down the list.
Chicago, Columbia, Penn, Yale, USC, and Georgetown are all very urban, even the ones with nice campuses clearly delineated from the surrounding city. Do you like that? Some do, some don’t. UNC and UVA are classic campuses in great college towns. Does that appeal? Wake, Vanderbilt, and Wash U have beautiful campuses in suburban neighborhoods a few miles from downtown Winston-Salem and St. Louis (both of which have things to do). So you might use environment to narrow your list.
Or how about weather? Duke UVA, Wake, Vanderbilt, USC, and to a large extent Georgetown and Wash U, are going to have nice weather most of the school year. Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale will be cold for most of the year. Some students are just not going to want to head out of the dorm every morning with temps below 40 degrees. They are not going to want snow and ice around a lot of January and February, maybe longer.
We’ve looked at many of these schools, and your stats are familiar. Others we liked included Santa Clara University and William and Mary, which would be more safety and match, respectively. I like the University of Washington in Seattle, nice campus a short light rail ride away from downtown. You can apply EA to UVA, Santa Clara, Michigan, and Wisconsin, if any of those appeal (besides UVA). Can’t remember about Washington.
ED deadlines will be coming up soon. I suggest you consider do that IF (and only if) you have a school you love and can afford. Note that some of yours have modified early application rules. Many of these schools, like Duke, accept a much higher % in ED. There are factors that naturally make this rate higher (recruited athletes, legacies, etc.), but these students are also committing to the school, which the schools love because it is good for the institution in many ways (financially, yield, student satisfaction, etc.)
Good luck!
It would be helpful to post your stats/background/interests but there are some things to think about even without that knowledge. Columbia and Chicago both have intensive core curricula. A lot of your time there will be spent fulfilling requirements, some of which might not interest you at all. You have to be aware of how this quirk will affect you. You’ll have less time for electives, which means every “for the hell of it” course comes with a hefty time-cost. It will also affect your ability to double major and study abroad. Clearly students manage happily or the schools would have crazy transfer-out rates, but you do have to consider your priorities before you commit. Brown is at the other extreme, with no core or distribution reqs at all. The upside to this is total academic freedom. The downside is that unless you know your academic interests well, you can end up spending the first two years (until you declare a major) feeling unmoored and aimless. The other schools on your list, to the best of my knowledge, fall somewhere in between: you have to fulfill some very broad distribution reqs but still have a fair degree of freedom to take what you want.
What is your major?
What activities do you want to pursue outside of class?
Have you visited any of these and what did you like about them?
Did you visit other schools and cross them off the list and what didn’t you like about those?