You are a very strong candidate. Don’t underestimate yourself! Based on your academic success, overall profile and desired school location and size, I would recommend looking into Georgetown, Tufts, Boston College, Wellesley/Smith/Bryn Mawr/Mount Holyoke (if an all female school is OK), Wesleyan, Holy Cross, Trinity, Bowdoin, Amherst, Swarthmore, Haverford, Macalester, and William & Mary. If you’re interested in the West Coast, definitely check out the Pomona consortium schools, esp. Pomona and Claremont McKenna. Best of luck to you!
Ignore the Princeton review advice. Any list that doesn’t include Michigan as a top school for PoliSci is not to be trusted. Michigan is also stellar in sociology.
GW’s omission would be another example of the list’s, at best, incompleteness.
@pigeon001: You may want to consider the anthropology offerings at your prospective choices. Students with an interest in sociology may find courses in anthropology (particularly cultural) to be equally interesting and rewarding.
^^
The list does include GW, Amherst as well. I erred by not including them.
@pigeon001 First, your stats are excellent. Many schools don’t require the SAT II subject tests and, as you say, you will be retaking them due to the irregularities. Your SAT I (1500) is very good and your AP test results support your strong command of English.
Are you interested in attending school within a reasonable distance of where your parents will be relocating? That could be one way to narrow down your choices.
While you say money is not a problem, I’m sure your parents would appreciate it if you secured some merit scholarships. Your academic profile would make you competitive and in many cases there is no separate application. You also said you were open to women’s colleges. With that in mind (and repeating some recommendations made up thread), Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, and Smith all offer merit scholarships and the latter two also have the benefit of being in consortium with U Mass Amherst, Amherst College, and Hampshire College. You could take courses on other campuses if a like course is not offered at your home campus.
If you are interested in political science, might you also want to be near Washington DC? American, Georgetown, George Washington and University of Richmond might all be worth a look. American and Richmond also offer merit money, not sure about GWU.
Somebody upthread mentioned Macalester - great LAC in a wonderful urban location - strong in international relations and has a vibrant international student presence. Merit up to 20K.
Finally, Asian applicants tend to be underrepresented at liberal arts colleges so that could also work in your favor.
Best of luck to you!
Tufts
@pigeon001 A few issues for you to consider:
The US is BIG. If your family moves to one side of the US, and you are on the other side, then you are still nearly 3,000 miles away from them. If you tell us what state your parents are moving to, then we can suggest universities that are relatively close by.
The US has a few thousand universities and colleges (I have seen estimates ranging from “about 3,000” to 4,140). Your stats are very good so that about 30 or perhaps 50 of these schools are uncertain, in the sense that you might or might not get in. You should get accepted to pretty much all of the rest of them, which is still thousands of schools. Thus you have a LOT of choices and will need to reduce the list somehow.
Whether you are an international student or not will depend upon your visa status in the US.
As an international student, you might get financial aid at some schools, but this is difficult. There is a large chance that you might be a full pay student, which at some schools might cost as much as $70,000 dollars per year (or $280,000 total, assuming that you graduate in 4 years). The vast majority of students in the US cannot afford to pay this much, and therefore have to find ways to make university less expensive. If you are likely to want to go on to graduate school (or law school or medical school) then it is a good idea to save some money for graduate school, so that avoiding a full price undergraduate school is particularly important. Many students take on too much debt for university – the total debt of students who have graduated from universities in the US is becoming a major problem. However, depending upon the choice of schools the prices can vary tremendously. As one example, the total cost per year for the schools that my daughters were accepted to ranged from about $16,000 per year to about $65,000 per year. There was almost no relationship between the cost and the academic strength of the school (eg, the two academically strongest schools were the least expensive and the most expensive).
This source, which pertains to sociology and anthropology at smaller schools, describes the departments at colleges with a range of selectivity:
http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/small-colleges/sociology-anthropology/
You’re getting great advice, just a clarifying question - are you a Japanese citizen taking going to high school here in the US? Or going to an intl school in Japan? It’s a little surprising to see MUN, NHS which are typically US high school organizations, but I guess they could be international.