please suggest some safeties, matches, and reaches!

<p>So I'm a member of the class of '06 and I have begun my college research. I plan to begin applying in July to some schools.</p>

<p>Everyone keeps telling me that I should know what I want out of a college before I start looking at them. </p>

<p>I basically want a good pre-med school, I am thinking about biology as a major, I want to be involved with a student publication (newspaper or newsmagazine), and I truly want an urban/metropolitan campus.</p>

<p>My stats are as follows:
3.9 weighted GPA
690 Critical Reading
650 Math
730 Writing, with a perfect score on the essay</p>

<p>30 on the ACT; I'm still waiting on my June score...</p>

<p>Great ecs and recs</p>

<p>I received a student grant for a club that recreates classic art pieces in a grid-like fashion. It's called, quite appropriately, Mosaique. Get it? People each get one piece of the grid, complete it, and then we put it together to get the whole piece. People say this would be my hook...?</p>

<p>Volunteer at hospital</p>

<p>Extremely involved with the school newspaper, which is a National Pacemaker winning paper; for those who don't know, the Pacemaker is the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, but it is for high school publications.</p>

<p>blah blah blah</p>

<p>Some schools I'm considering...</p>

<p>U of I @ Urbana-Champaign
U of I @ Chicago, for their GPPA program which guarantees admission into med school, if you are accepted into the program
Northwestern
U Chicago
Boston U
Cornell?
UPenn?
Carnegie Mellon?
Wisconsin-Madison
Michigan-Ann Arbor
Purdue
WUSTL
Loyola in Chicago</p>

<p>Help me out guys...what else should i be considering</p>