I’d suggest that you take a look at Drake U in Des Moines. It is off the radar for most people who aren’t from the midwest and is much more likely to be safe for you than any of the others mentioned. It has a decent mix of undergrad and grad students, decent academics, centralized campus inside the city, and strong support for athletic teams. http://www.drake.edu/
@northwesty Tufts does not report percentage of students in top 10% anymore, causing them to drop to #57 in selectivity even though they should be ranked about #15-20 with the 10% included.
I think that Emory would be a good school to consider as well, especially Oxford College with your lower GPA.
Awesome, thanks for the suggestions guys, I’ll take a look at all these.
@Bjklw2a @gocats24 Do you guys know the lowdown on Oxford? Is it academically equivalent to Emory?
-WJ
Though it is not a “safety” with an admissions rate of 12%, Johns Hopkins has a beautiful urban campus like Vandy and GT with a similar USNWR ranking (11). For that matter, so does Northwestern University.
“Tufts does not report percentage of students in top 10% anymore, causing them to drop to #57 in selectivity even though they should be ranked about #15-20 with the 10% included.”
Got it. Thanks for the explanation.
Just based on test scores, Tuft’s 31-34 comes just ahead of Case Western (30-34, #29 selectivity score) and the same as Northeastern (31-34, #26 selectivity score).
BU and Northeastern could be match schools as well for the OP.
“My family does not qualify for need-based aid as far as finances go…”
I guess I am a bit hung up by the word “safety” in this thread’s original title. However, “safety” is not just “you will get in”, but also “you can afford it” as well as “you are willing to go there”. There are plenty of families that don’t qualify for need based aid, but still are not able to pay an unlimited amount for an education.
Does the fact that your family will not qualify for need-based aid mean that your family is okay with spending $70,000 per year for university, or do you need to take the price of a school into consideration?
@wjanos1 Oxford is just a smaller campus version of Emory and has smaller classrooms. I was admitted there and heard that the academics are slightly more rigorous than those at the main campus and that even though it may be seen as a backdoor to Emory, lots of the kids who continue at Emory have very high GPAs there and graduate in the top of their class at the Emory main campus later. I guess you can’t go wrong with it 
@wjanos1 As @Bjklw2a said, oxford is the same as emory academically, if not even stronger, yet easier to get in to. However instead of having 2000 kids per class (emory), you’re going to have 500 at oxford.
I would definitely check out both schools if you can make it out there, because emory seems similar to schools you’ve liked previously, and oxford is a “safer” school… which feeds into emory after two years anyway.
Something that you might not like about oxford is how it’s in what I would consider rural Georgia, which doesn’t correspond with what your preferences are–though there are always exceptions
Dayton and Syracuse fall in the safety range.