Please Help Create College Shopping List

<p>Hi Everyone. When I first came to this site a few months ago, my daughter was 100% sure she was all about Princeton. After reading and researching, she realizes as do I, that even great kids get rejected from great/good/even ok schools. She is trying to create a list of schools to research in depth and possibly start visiting this summer (she will be a junior next year) Currently, she is a great student (ranked 3rd in her class and maxs out all AP's with high 90 averages in each) 4.0 unweighted GPA, 218 PSAT...has not taken SAT yet. Band leadership and community service. She is a hard worker and is not afraid of big course load. She seems to gravitate to schools in the undergraduate range of 1500-5000 (but we visited Northwestern at 8000 and she liked it) She would not like big State Schools (in state-Texas or out) (we are a huge UT family, but she wants nothing to do with a school that size) </p>

<p>She wants to major either in a science or possibly music, but the goal is a pre-med course that will pave the way to Med School. She likes idea of the combined BA/BS/MD programs, but not required. She will consider Ivys, LACs, etc. She is a white female, socially and economically conservative and is very outgoing, but likes her alone time too. She seems to lean toward schools with greek systems, although she loves the ideas of dining clubs of the Ivys too. </p>

<p>I know this a lot, but if anyone could take some time to list some reach schools, target schools and certainly some safes that would be great. She seems to want out of Texas and deep, deep south (AL, LA, GA,(maybe Emory) FL, MS, etc) Also if any of these schools are good with MERIT aid, please note that. I don't think we will qualify for much need based aid, but with other kids in college and little ones still under the roof, we will take what we can get...lol.</p>

<p>Thank you...thank you...thank you....!!</p>

<p>ivy with a liberal arts feel = dartmouth</p>

<p>Barnard College might be a really good match for her, if she doesn’t mind it being all-girls. Barnard is in conjunction with Columbia though (the diploma is actually a Columbia degree), so it’s not like she’ll never see guys. It feels more conservative than Columbia does as well. There are around 2500 undergrads at Barnard plus the students at Columbia, and both Barnard students can take classes at Columbia, and vice versa. </p>

<p>As for schools with merit based aid, the only ones I can think of are NYU, Rice, UChicago, and Mount Holyoke.</p>

<p>This description screams: Cornell.
Strong in sciences, especially biology.
Different from the Texas environment.
Greek system, great food, people are social, but introverted.
A bit big though, and NO merit aid.</p>

<p>Great Ideas!! Anymore? Brown? Vandy?</p>

<p>Bumping this thread…trying to create a summer trip today for college visits…Thank you</p>