Please Help Me Choose Where to Apply to! I Will Love You Forever! :D

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Okay, so I want to finalize my college list pretty soon here, and I'm looking to see what you think of my list of colleges.</p>

<p>What's important to me:
- Full of bright students
- Great campus & staff
- Affordable (I must have fin-aid!!)
- In a decent sized city (100k+)
- Decent weather
- Other obvious factors that I'm not going to bother to list</p>

<p>A few quick stats to put me into perspective:
GPA: 3.93 (Valedictorian)
ACT: 34 (retaking, maybe higher :P)</p>

<hr>

<p>Brief reason why I want to apply in parenthesis.</p>

<p>For Sure Applying to:
Stanford University <a href="great%20financial%20aid">Applying EA</a>
Georgetown University (DC is super-cool)
University of Iowa (Safety + decent college anyway)</p>

<p>Probably Applying to:
Harvard University (for giggles-probably won't apply if I'm rejected at Stanford)
Washington University in St. Louis (Driving distance from home, going to an AdCom's presentation thing soon too)
University of Pennsylvania (sounds like a fun, urban school, plus I want to apply to one ivy aside from Harvard)</p>

<p>Possibly Applying to:
Duke University (I've heard good things from someone who went there)
University of Chicago (Driving distance from home)
Vanderbilt University (Not sure...)
George Washington University (DC is super-cool, and I might not get into GT)</p>

<hr>

<p>Don't tell me I need more safeties/matches. If I don't get into a reach school, I will just go to U of Iowa. I will probably apply to around seven schools, but none of these are set in stone aside from University of Iowa, Stanford, and Georgetown. Are there any of schools that you all think I should apply to? or is my list fairly sufficient? or are there any that I should remove?</p>

<p>Also, should I look into LACs? What's the difference between LACs and Unis? (other than no grad school :P )</p>

<p>Thanks, any info/advice is helpful!!</p>

2

<p>What’s your major?</p>

3

<p>Not sure! :(</p>

<p>I eventually think I maybe want to go to law school after an undergrad degree though. Though, I don’t necessarily have to go to grad school where I do undergrad… so grad school is irrelevant.</p>

4

<p>LAC’s are more undergrad oriented. Additionally, they tend to be, but aren’t always, smaller, more close knit, and are usually in suburban or rural atmospheres. Again, that’s just generally speaking, there are exceptions. Also, your college list is a bit odd, as some of the colleges have different atmospheres. Do you prefer more of an intellectual environment? Preprofessional? In terms of selectivity, I think you have a decent mix, since you seem to be ok with U Iowa.</p>

5

<p>I don’t know what I want, really. I want to apply to a fairly wide variety so I can search out my options and visit a campus. While I picked each for a different reason, there are underlying reasons why I pick them all.</p>

<p>I am okay with U of Iowa, but I’m really not looking forward to the 80% of my class that will be made up of drunk idiots. I want to have fun, but getting plastered and failing at life (+ school) miserably is not my idea of fun. If I do go U Iowa, I’ll probably be in the Honors program and I’ll go fairly cheap (obviously partly because of in-state tuition, but also because of scholarships that I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to earn). I want an atmosphere that I could walk out in the hallway of a dorm and talk to a random person about something intellectual. I don’t want to walk into the hallway to discuss how they’re going to get a kegger for their “totally killer party.”</p>