<p>I think I've finally figured out an ideal college list. The only thing is, the majority of my schools are pretty safe. My stats are well above the 75% and the admit rates are pretty good at most schools. The only difficult school on my list is Pomona, but i know i wouldn't go there, even if i got in..</p>
<p>Is it ok to drop your reach, and just have matches and safeties? Especially if you wouldn't really want to go there. I have no other "reach" schools that i like, but i love my matches and safeties...so is it ok? My GC seems to insist that you HAVE to apply to a reach...but i think that's stupid</p>
<p>The rest of my list is Smith, Pitzer(which might still be a lowish reach), Scripps, UAlabama, and Union.</p>
<p>and just so you get an idea, i have an ACT 34, top 1% of class,and a 4.0uw</p>
<p>Personally, I would drop Pomona since you don’t like it and find a better school. Apply to some really high level schools or universities. If you need financial aid, apply to reaches, such as the ivies, that provide outstanding financial aid, even though they may be tough to get into. At least have one reach that way if you get into all your matches and safeties and have no reaches, you won’t be left wondering what would’ve happened if you applied to better schools.</p>
<p>Rocket6: I think you need to get a grip here. You’ve got a very strong credentials and have a great chance any school you want to apply to.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you’d be happy ant Scripps and Pitzer but not consider going to Pomona, but OK. If you don’t want to apply to Pomona, then don’t. </p>
<p>You’ve got a great list. But perhaps you should throw caution to the winds, so to speak and appy to a place that you’d really like to go to–regardless of the merit money and see what happens.</p>
<p>rocket6,
You’re doing fine. Take a deep breath. Your credentials are outstanding. You don’t need to go someplace you don’t like just to make a statement to the world. Apply to the schools you think you’ll love. You’ll get into at least one and very likely have choices. That’s an enviable position. Just nail your essays, dog the deadlines, and you’re home free.</p>
<p>I would visit Pomona if you haven’t seen it yet before dropping it off your list. If you like the environment at other 5Cs I think you might well like Pomona - in a lot of ways the environment there is quite similar to Scripps, other than being a bit bigger and coed. I graduated from Scripps and loved it but feel I could’ve been happy attending Pomona. However, if you’ve already determined from a visit that you don’t like Pomona, I’d definitely drop it off your list. There’s no reason you have to apply to reaches, and it’ll result in a less knuckle-biting, stressful senior year.</p>
<p>It doesn’t make sense to apply to ANY school that you know you would not attend. It is a waste of the application fee (and the time of the admissions committee at that school).</p>
<p>The most important schools on your list are your financial/academic safeties. Your list is fine without Pomona.</p>
<p>Btw, my D applied to only matches and safeties, had almost identical “stats,” and is very happy at the school she chose - and with the scholarships she was offered for being a top applicant.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t presume that U of Alabama is overwhelmingly conservative. It’s big enough that a lot of different viewpoints are present. George Wallace has been gone for quite a while.</p>
<p>You also should take into consideration that with high stats like yours, some schools might see you as you using them as safeties/matches, with no intentions of actually going if you got in aka Tufts Syndrome.</p>
<p>I feel your schools are all over the place, but that’s a different story. I sense that your hesitation to apply to any reach schools deals with what you presume might be an intense workload or a place where its always competition competition competition. That is not always the case. I might also sense that maybe you’re looking at schools to much on a surface level, and not really getting into what they have to offer. Its so easy to get caught up with the “names” just because they’re elite and be turned off by them or by the perceived student body that attends them, but consider the possibility that Pitzer was the reach and Pomona wasn’t, would Pomona be on your list and not Pitzer simply because Pitzer is the reach? Or what if Pitzer was an Ivy would you automatically cross it off your list?</p>
<p>When you have a school like Pitzer, there’s no reasons why you shouldn’t be able to find a peer or reach school at places like Reed, Grinnell, Swarthmore, UChicago, Rice, Wesleyan, Vassar, Brown, New College of Florida, or even Pomona.</p>
<p>You have yet to apply to schools, and I’ll tell you that during your senior year, once admissions decisions start rolling in you might want to wish you would have applied to a reach or two. Your mind my change. </p>
<p>I would understand your hesitation if your reach school was CMC, as it’s the complete opposite of Pitzer’s student body, but Pomona really?</p>
<p>I agree that it’s hard to see why you would refuse to attend Pomona if you would happily go to Pitzer…have you visited? </p>
<p>I completely agree that you ought to consider the list of schools cited by liek0806. And Wellesley.</p>
<p>You don’t HAVE to have a reach, and it’s great that you like your matches and safeties, but you might change your mind about whatever is holding you back between now and next April, and it is always good to mazimize your options.</p>
<p>From personal experience, a match, or safety school might not be safe at all. There was one school I thought I was going to be accepted to, but ended up being waitlisted. On the other hand, I got into two reach schools (one of which being Pomona which I now attend). In the end it was smart of me to apply to these reaches.</p>
<p>Just out of curiousity, if you dont mind, what is it about Pomona that makes you not want to attend?</p>