<p>An African-American female with great math/science grades and great ECs could be very attractive to a lot of schools, especially if her test scores are competitive.</p>
<p>I think Chapel Hill is going to be hard to beat, given her criteria. UVA is arguably a slightly better school and similar in many ways, but definitely tending more conservative, less diverse, more upscale than UNC-CH. Only about 1/3 of the undergrads at UVA get any need-based FA at all, as opposed to 41% at UNC-CH. As for racial diversity, Chapel Hill is actually a bit whiter (66.0% v. 60.2% at UVA) but also a little blacker (9.2% African-American v. 7.9% at UVA). The different is UVA has a lot more Asians (11.5% v. 5.8% at Chapel Hill) while Chapel Hill has a lot more Hispanics (10.7% v. 4.8% at UVA) Different ethnic mixes, but a fair degree of diversity at both.</p>
<p>From Maryland south to North Carolina, the strongest universities academically would be Duke, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, UVA, UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, William & Mary, George Washington, U Maryland, Va Tech, American, and NC State, in roughly that order. Of those schools, Johns Hopkins, William & Mary, George Washington, and American are not going to have the kind of rah-rah/marching band/big-time college sports scene that she seems to want. Duke, Georgetown, and Wake are much more basketball-oriented; the marching band doesn’t do much marching for basketball, I imagine. Plus these schools are on the smaller side, Wake Forest is not very diverse at all, Georgetown is a Catholic school which might be too similar to her HS, and Duke is . . . well, Duke. William & Mary is also small. </p>
<p>So that sort of leaves Chapel Hill and UVA, with UMD a distant third, followed by VaTech and NC State.</p>
<p>Just for the academics, I’d have her take a close look at Johns Hopkins, but I don’t think she’ll find the kind of “school spirit” atmosphere she’s looking for.</p>
<p>Going as far north as NYC/eastern PA adds 3 Ivies (Princeton, Columbia, Penn), 1 very good public (Penn State, but it’s in a pretty remote location, no easy access to NC or public transportation), 2 pretty good publics (Rutgers, but out-of-staters don’t generally choose Rutgers, and UDel, smaller school but pretty big sports scene), and a smattering of other privates including NYU (giant, expensive, and no sports/rah-rah scene) and Fordham (Catholic school in the Bronx, again possibly too similar to her HS).</p>
<p>If I were her I’d consider a mix of schools: Chapel Hill, NC State, UVA, VaTech, Johns Hopkins, UMD, UDel, and maybe Penn. Then I’d choose Chapel Hill because it seems to fit her criteria almost perfectly.</p>