Leave out CMU.
A strong college for the sciences/math where your voice training would be a plus Is St Olaf. If you show interest you’d have a very good shot and it’d make an easy low match where you could continue with music. I know a kid from there who’s interning alongside kids from ucb, uchic, stanford, and uiuc, at one of the high tech companies everyone talks about. They meet need and have merit aid too.
RPI is a good match, as would URochester.
For the same reason, I’d take Penn off your list. Tufts sounds good as well as Rochester.
Stop competing and get some therapy for the anxiety.
Choose schools that will educate you without breaking you.
Agree with Tufts and Rochester as excellent choices. Consider Brandeis and Northeastern. For less pressure than RPI, consider WPI.
I saw your posting in the other forum about campus suicides and followed you here. I agree with other posters…you need to get off the pressure cooker college path. The anxiety is telling you that you need a place to be relaxed, engaged, and creative. Do something different…dare to go to a B level small school that will nurture you (and give you merit money). If you haven’t yet done so, read The Colleges that Change Lives book. You can be extremely successful in your life, get a great education, and keep your anxiety at a minimum with the right environment and support. My kid was stressed in HS with 7 hours of homework every night including weekends. She developed anxiety as a result. There was no way she was going to keep on the crazy track. she will be a freshman this year. She chose a B level medium school, with an interesting major, that provides tons of support to students who want it. All the schools we looked at fell into that category…there are plenty of them. If you suffer with anxiety, don’t put yourself in an anxiety provoking school situation. It’s not a race! It is your life. Decide how and where you truly want to spend your precious time.
I can’t imagine you not getting into RPI and Bing. I second the suggestions to include University of Rochester and WPI on your list. Both have very collaborative, low pressure environments from what we could tell. And if you visit University of Rochester, consider visiting RIT as well. I suspect it would be a safety for you; nonetheless it’s a good school with a nice environment.
You have a lot going in with your EC’s. I know it’s difficult, sometimes things have to fall away in order to make life more manageable. My daughter had to pass up some opportunities she would have enjoyed in order to maintain a healthy life, and excel the way she wanted to in school and in her most important activities.
Cool 
I personally started classical training at 12, but am not interested in pursuing operatic studies; however, many of my friends have. Good to know you were being safe with your voice.
I am in therapy for the anxiety, thank you for the concern. I do not intend to continue studying music, I probably will join choirs of some sort but I know that I am a science person and after having struggled so much in AP music theory I can’t see myself majoring or even minoring in music.
@transitmom I feel like everyone here that is telling me not to go to a pressure-loaded school is right, but I’m just honestly kind of scared to be shooting for less than top tier. The kids in my school are all really competitive with each other and I guess it rubbed off on me. I feel like if I don’t go to a top tier college, I’m a failure. And I know that’s not even remotely true, but that’s just how it feels. I can’t be the only kid that feels this way with all the pressure there is today
I totally second (third? fourth?) what several others have said: you need to get off this competitive hamster wheel. Please have the courage to defy the messages you are receiving from your peers and from your environment that are telling you that you’re a failure if you don’t go to a top college, etc. The advantage to going to a less competitive school will be that you won’t feel that same pressure. Why would you deliberately go to a school where the environment is just as conducive to making you feel stressed and miserable as where you are now? Why do that to yourself? Who is the winner if you go to a name brand school but you’re miserable the whole time?
My older daughter will matriculate at Scripps this fall. She had a 3.97 UW GPA in the most rigorous classes at her school, a 2190 SAT, and decent ECs (not nearly as much variety or time commitment as you but they showed passion, etc.). She could have taken a shot at a top tier school, but she struggles with anxiety like you and she did not want a pressure cooker environment. She wanted a small, nurturing school where she would find “her people” and would feel at home. Her SAT scores put her right around the 50% mark for Scripps, so she knew she would neither be in the bottom of the pack nor (as some people worry about) surrounded by people not as academically strong as herself. She applied ED to Scripps and was accepted.
I think you should do something similar – identify a few match schools that have a culture where you will feel at home, and focus your energies on those. Have you visited any campuses? When you were there, did you look around and ask yourself if the students there looked like people you could be friends with? The thing that will make the most difference in whether you have a happy 4 years or not is the people around you. Don’t neglect that aspect of choosing a college.
Realistically, as a woman majoring in CS with your academic ability, you are on a pretty secure career track. You don’t have to go to CMU or Penn to be successful. And if you go to one of those schools and you have to take a leave due to anxiety, what will that accomplish?
I wonder if you are feeling added pressure from feeling competitive with your twin? That can be doubly hard for siblings and especially twins who are always being compared to each other anyway.
I am going to post something more general in the suicide thread and I hope you will read it. You are a bright and talented young woman with so much ahead of you – please don’t treat yourself like a cog in a machine that is only worth as much as the work that it does.
Please, please walk away from the rat race.,
You will be in a stronger position if you chose to walk away from this pseudo-competition. You will be choosing your path, instead of just following what “everyone else” does. This puts you in control and gives you the power over yourself.
I worked very hard with my daughter to ignore the high school rat race because staying in meant anxiety, doubt and living for the approval of others: teachers, classmates, college admissions offices, me the parent - everyone but herself.
My child made a conscious decision in ninth grade to get seven or eight hours of sleep every night. This meant going to bed by ten. This meant she sacrificed chances for the A and settled for B’s. In the end, I think she made the right choice. Did the upper tier students look down at her? Eh. Quite possibly and probably. But she didn’t care. She was doing things her way and letting the others do things their way. I’d take a well rested, happy B student over an anxious A student. (If she could have pulled off happy, well rested A, I’d take that too but that didn’t happen)
I agree with looking at CTCL schools. Not because that’s the best you can do but because they, and many other small colleges, provide a supportive and collaborative environment. Also these schools will give you substantial merit awards and it always feels good to get merit money.
I have two other suggestions to consider:
St. Olaf is a lovely school with both excellent CS as well as world-renowned choral music program.
Rose-Hulman would be a solid match, especially due to gender, and superior in CS also. May also be a bit less intense than some of the other schools others have listed, which might help with anxiety.
Good luck!
I understand not wanting to sell yourself short. Good for you. You just need to figure out what that means. You do not want to ignore your mental health - that, too, is selling yourself short. There are some extremely bright people at some of the schools that have been mentioned. CMU and Penn do not have room for everyone. In addition, once you leave high school, it’s done. So choosing a school based on the culture at your high school is short-sighted. You are looking for a great 4 year experience. That 15 minutes you spend telling people you are going to CMU is short-lived.
You will be surrounded by other intelligent, interesting, and hard working students at schools like Rochester, RPI, WPI, Rose Hulman, RIT, etc. Check the computer science curriculum, get a feel for the campus, research opportunities. You can very likely get what you need outside of a pressure cooker.
Another mom encouraging you to step back from the intense and unhealthy competition. It’s completely unnecessary to achieve the things you want in life.
FWIW, my bright, quirky niece studied CS at Drexel (a good but hardly “prestigious” school), and today is “living the life” in San Francisco, where she has a great job making very good money. She considered Rose-Hulman, too, but it was just too far from home for her, even though they offered her some very nice merit money. She took the great merit money Drexel offered at the time and made the most of a terrific co-op program. (She was also accepted at Georgetown and Miami but turned them down due to costs and has absolutely zero regrets.)
My advice: Find a place where you can do well WHILE being happy. You don’t have to participate in “the game” if you don’t want to. Do not allow others to define you or determine your worth. It’s a terrible way to live and no matter how hard you compete, there will always be somebody “better” than you. Life is not a competition.
I suggest that you read the wise words of this student. http://www.thecollegiateblog.org/2013/07/24/student-stories/
Go to Wells College, its a beautiful campus. It’s small and has a great CS program
REQUIRED COURSES
All of the following (30 sem. hrs.)
CS 131 Programming I: Procedural Methods (4 sem. hrs.)
CS 132 Programming II: Object Orientation (4 sem. hrs.)
CS 225 Computer Organization and Assembly Language Programming (3 sem. hrs.)
MATH 111 Calculus I: Introduction to Calculus (4 sem. hrs.)
MATH 112 Calculus II: Introduction to Calculus (4 sem. hrs.)
MATH 267 Discrete Mathematics I (3 sem. hrs.)
MPS 402 Senior Seminar in Mathematical and Physical Sciences I (2 sem. hrs.)
MPS 403 Senior Seminar in Mathematical and Physical Sciences II (2 sem. hrs.)
PHYS 111L Fundamentals of Physics I (4 sem. hrs.)
Three of the following (9 sem. hrs.)
CS 310 Software Engineering (3 sem. hrs.)
CS 322 Algorithms: Design and Analysis (3 sem. hrs.)
CS 325 Database Systems (3 sem. hrs.)
CS 340 Unix/Linux Systems Administration (3 sem. hrs.)
CS 345 GUI Programming (3 sem. hrs.)
CS 368 Discrete Mathematics II ( 3 sem. hrs.)
CS 285/385 Topics in Computer Science (3 sem. hrs.)
MATH 301 Applied and Computational Mathematics (3 sem. hrs.)
My D2 was very much like you but decided that she wanted and needed balance. She chose a great school - in the top 50 on USNews - but not one prized by the college competition crowd, not the most competitive school she could have gotten into, but one she liked a lot and applied to ED.
Well a funny thing happened. While the kids at the pressure cookers are beating each other up trying to stay perfect and sometimes killing themselves if they can’t. She is excelling at her school, fascinated by the academics and enjoying her life to boot. She’s a ChemE no less, one of the hardest majors. She said that in HS, no matter what she did or how hard she worked, she felt like a slacker but in college, but because of her background in the really competitive HS, she is well prepared, very confident, knows she’s at the top of her class, and is generally very happy.
Oberlin is a possibility.
Yet another mom urging you to step back from seeing this as a competition, but writing because I looked back to your initial post and saw that you’re planning to take both AB Bio and AP Chem senior year. That sounds awfully tough, and then you throw in college applications and SAT/ACT prep, it could be way too much.
AP Chem and AP Bio together are insane. NO college expects that from you. Take the one you like best and take something else instead of the other.