Recommend a few reaches?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>3.92 UW
4.41 W
2050 SAT (710 Writing, 650 Math, 690 Critical Reading)
Decent ECs
Almost all Honors/AP classes
5 on AP US History
No SAT IIs, can take if needed</p>

<p>Looking for midsized, liberal, good polisci and business programs, decent financial aid. </p>

<p>Location: No further west than Ohio and no further south than Virginia. I know this limits me, I just hate hot weather. </p>

<p>Already applying to Penn State as my safety and American as my match, but I want to find a few reaches too. Thanks!</p>

2

<p>Class Rank- 24/251</p>

3

<p>Georgetown
Johns Hopkins
Carnegie Mellon
Tufts (no undergraduate business)
UVa</p>

4

<p>Sorry, should have mentioned this. Georgetown, GW, and NYU are out, for varying reasons. I have been looking at Tufts and its definitely a possibility. I thought Johns Hopkins is mainly for pre-meds? I also thought CMU has bad financial aid?</p>

5

<p>Johns Hopkins is a comprehensive research university with many strong departments (including English, Creative Writing, German, History, and International Relations). Its most popular majors include International Relations, Economics, and Psychology (as well as Public Health, Bioengineering, and Biomedical Engineering). According to a poster in a 2009 CC thread, about 20% of graduating JHU students had completed the pre-med track (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/johns-hopkins-university/720375-how-many-freshman-students-pre-med.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/johns-hopkins-university/720375-how-many-freshman-students-pre-med.html&lt;/a&gt; , post #3). JHU is a need-blind, full-need school.</p>

<p>Carnegie Mellon, for what it’s worth, ranks #45 on the Kiplinger list of “best value” private universities ([Best</a> Values in Private Colleges, 2011-12](<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/privatecolleges/]Best”>Kiplinger | Personal Finance News, Investing Advice, Business Forecasts)). According to its 2011-12 Common Data Set, Section H, on average it meets 83% of determined need for students granted need-based aid. So it’s not among the 50 or so “full-need” colleges and universities, but I would not say it has “bad financial aid”, either.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, there are not too many full-need schools that meet all your criteria. UPenn/Wharton is one (if it’s not too large for you), but it is probably out of reach for your scores and rank.</p>

6

<p>Tufts has no business school, and is good with financial aid but offers no merit aid.
What didn’t you like about Georgetown, NYU, GW? It might help people make suggestions.
B.C.?</p>

7

<p>Georgetown and GW are out because they seem very elitist, rich, and they are very expensive. I have no desire to go to a place like that. NYU is out because of the very high grad median debt. If I had 200k, I would go there in a heartbeat. </p>

<p>And my mistake about JHU and CMU, I don’t know all that much about them</p>

8

<p>And for BC, I am about as far from Catholic as possible</p>

9

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<p>You’re in the driver’s seat here, so you can pick (or not pick) any school you like, based on any criteria or information you want. But really, all these schools (including Tufts and JHU) are very expensive. American is just a few thousand dollars less than Georgetown, GW, Tufts, and JHU. Georgetown and JHU are full-need schools; the others are not (though Tufts is close).</p>

<p>“Rich” is good in this game if you want financial aid. Most of the need-blind, full-need schools (the Ivies, etc.) are also among the schools with the highest endowments per capita. They all have a whiff of elitism (along with predominantly liberal political and social views at most.)</p>