<p>My little sister is a high school senior applying to colleges. I think she does a great job planning for herself, very mature and disciplined kid, but no one person knows about all the possibilities out there and I wanted to figure out if there were schools that I should recommend to her that she hasn't considered.</p>
<p>Education/Stats: I don't remember what she got on the SAT, but she scored in the 230s on the PSAT, which would translate to 2300s on the SAT, so she's probably around that range. She has mostly As with a few Bs and has taken or is taking several AP classes (I know about AP World History, AP English, AP US History, AP Gov & Politics, AP Psych, and AP Calc AB, there might be more) with 5s and maybe a 4 or two on the ones she's taken so far. She's in a public high school with several different magnet programs, and is part of the semi-autonomous performing arts school (one of the top high school performing arts programs in the country), as a theater "major" with a vocal music "minor". </p>
<p>ECs: She's been on the school's elite Science Bowl team (the only non-math/science/technology magnet member) for two or three years. She's done volunteer work with the local Democratic Party office. She has appeared in the performing arts school's musicals. She sings in the selective local Youth Choir and the even-more-selective Youth Chamber Chorus, and has sung/acted in the Youth Opera. She has appeared in numerous plays, and is in her second year of training in playwriting. Last year several plays that she wrote, one of which she also directed, were performed at the performing arts school's New Works Festival. She was selected for and attended the prestigious Governor's School for the Arts summer program. She's an impressive creative writer who wrote her first novel (I read part of it, it was pretty good) when she was about 12.</p>
<p>She's a tremendous movie buff, and wants to be either a screenwriter or a film director. It is essential to her that the college she attends has a strong and prestigious film or theater program. However, after years in an elite performing arts program, she's sick of prima donna theater kids with entitlement complexes who think that they're above having to do their academic work (one reason she enjoys Science Bowl, different sort of kids there). And she wants her degree to be from a place that's respected outside of the artistic world, in case she needs a backup career. So it's also important to her that her college be an intellectual place where people take academics seriously and is strong in areas other than her primary interests.</p>
<p>She's outgoing, and artsy in both interests and fashion/appearance. She's ultra-liberal, but has lived her entire life in southern red states, so while I think she would enjoy a more liberal environment than she's used to, she is not going to freak out if she encounters politics different from her own in the school or city. She'd prefer the coasts to the middle, I think, and would prefer an urban environment. The school doesn't have to be huge, but it should be big enough to have good resources beyond teaching ability.</p>
<p>The schools that I know about that are currently on her list are:</p>
<p>Columbia
USC
UCLA (but I think she'd rather go there for grad school)
Yale
NYU (Tisch)</p>
<p>I've heard that I should point her at CMU, do people here agree? Are there others you'd recommend?</p>
<p>Edit: Also, she's an atheist. She has no problem with religion or religious people - her boyfriend is a born-again Christian - but the school should probably be secular.</p>