<p>Homer, highly qualified applicants get into Tufts. I invite you to head over to the Tufts RD thread, where you will see many candidates for Tufts syndrome who were admitted. "Tufts Syndrome" is the result of the fact that people who apply to Tufts as their 4th or 5th choice school invest less time and effort in the application, which indicates lack of interest in the school. The whole question is irrelevent anyway since since AnudduhMom didn't provide us with her son's stats.</p>
<p>Also, Tufts is way easier to get into than Princeton, and thus could be a viable alternative for her son.</p>
<p>Since I'm a Rice mom, I always cheerlead for Rice! Great school, but not-preppy, not-traditional, no-greeks, but great residential college system like princeton, faculty student ratio 1:5, beautiful green campus, music conservatory so singing opps, lots of student-run theater and musicals, smallish (2800 undergrads), in beautiful part of Houston - okay, definitely NOT East coast. Reasonably priced.</p>
<p>For all the majors you listed, definitely check brown.. Great in pretty much all the fields listed, and right up there with princeton as far as prestige, name, etc is concerned..</p>
<p>I'm going to ignore the "East Coast"-only rule to say that Northwestern seems to have strong programs in what your son is interested in. Great journalism, film, and creativing writing classes. But it doesn't have the "old world" feel to it, that's all.</p>
<p>Georgetown, GW, and American (American is esp. good if your son doesn't mind a slightly lower reputation, because it offers what the first two do at near-full tuition for students who are "Ivy caliber") are also good bets for history and any international-relations or poly-sci type interests. They all have really pretty campuses, too.</p>
<p>NYU is probably the one I'd most advocate as far as your son's interests go, for it has everything--a good name, strong in all creative aspects (creative writing, film, journalism, etc.). Also, it's in the city. Alas, it too, lacks that fine old architecture of Princeton.</p>