I probably should have applied to BYU-I just as a backup, but I pretty much had my heart set on the main campus. I probably could have earned an awesome scholarship, but it wouldn’t have been the same.
Harvard - Just to see if I could get in.
Princeton - I wrote it off thinking it was too lofty a goal, although if I got in, it woulda been a perfect fit.
Stanford - Something about amazing schools in California…wrote it off just like Princeton because I thought I had no shot whatsoever.
I wish I had applied to some LAC’s. I wrote off the entire category of schools based on silly stereotypes and baseless presumptions, and in retrospect, I would have liked to have had at least a couple smaller options on the table. However, I am THRILLED with my choice and I do believe things worked out for the best. There’s always a bit of “what if” but you can’t let it tarnish the great things you DO end up with!
I applied as a freshman transfer to Georgetown & George Washington Universities
I think I should have added Cornell,UPenn & Carnegie Mellon. All good schools with good financial aid that are only a couple of hours from where I am from.
Hmm… I think in retrospect I was a little too hasty about writing off schools that were far away. I live in NJ and consequently didn’t apply to UChicago, Stanford, Cambridge, or Oxford. Also, I didn’t really consider LAC’s like Swarthmore or Williams. But then again, I can’t really conceive of a better fit for me than Princeton (though I’m sure I would have liked some or all of the schools listed above) so it’s all for the best =)
I don’t really regret it, and it honestly wouldn’t have mattered, but I would have dropped Harvard & Penn for Yale & Columbia.
I’m with christiansoldier on the cambridge and oxford thing.
Harvard
Just because, since I saw a particular movie, I had always wanted to apply to Harvard. Then when it came time to decide what colleges to apply to I realized there was nothing I liked about Harvard lol
but I had always wanted to
never mind who cares lol
Yale,i was too scared to risk it…in retrospect,i wish i’d jus gone ‘wat the heck!’ and gone for it…
if you’re making your college choices and reading this,i’m with TRF on this one,don’t go/apply somewhere coz your parents want you to,or coz of ‘name prestige’ and don’t write off some schools just coz they seemingly lack the same,i wish i’d taken a closer look at smith and amherst…
That said,things worked out anyway and i’m still happy where i’m going 
Columbia, for sure. I’m transferring to NYU in the fall, but I’ll always wonder if I could have gotten into Columbia, which was my dream school since I was, like, a zygote. Instead, I got lazy and intimidated, thought a 3.9 wasn’t good enough, and didn’t even bother with the application.
I’m excited to go to NYU, but it would have been nice to go Ivy (I’m a prestige-ho), and not have eleventy billion dollars worth of student loans.
Heck yeah! Being from California I’ve always wanted to go USC and/or University of California-Berkeley. And now as I’m currently getting ready to attend my first year at University of Mississippi and thinking of transferring, I realize that I also should of applied to Purdue and University of Michigan. LOL
I’m happy with where I’m going this fall but I would’ve liked to see my decisions at Harvard, Yale (legacy), Princeton, and Stanford
Yale, so that if I got in, I could have attended their student visit days. Although not getting in would’ve been depressing, and I /am/ from a very Harvard family. I mean, I can imagine the Yale adcoms going “two Harvard-undergrad Stanford-grad parents? Ha. Yeah, right, like she’s going to come here.” (that reaction would be correct) So maybe not applying was the right thing to do.
I occasionally get a twinge of “gee, didn’t research that one much, maybe…?” though. I can’t imagine a better place for me than Harvard, but visiting Yale (or not getting in) would increase my surety that I made the right decision from ~98% to ~99.5%.