<p>My D is a Junior in HS. She has started visiting schools. She loved Penn and would love to go there. Are there any schools that are similar to Penn that she might get into if she doesn't get into Penn? She likes the size, location, excellent academics and school spirit/social life. Her unweighted GPA is 3.8, she has a 5 on the AP bio test, a 720 on the Bio SAT and a 30 on the ACT. She will retake the ACT in April and is waiting for her SATs to come back. Thanks.</p>
<p>By the way, she has amazing ECs and will have great recommendations.</p>
<p>Penn is a research university that has a significant pre-professional focus and is somewhat larger than many selective private schools. In that regard, it's often spoken of in the same breath as Cornell, Duke, and Northwestern. A little less selective comparison might be Southern Cal. The schools may be dissimilar in other ways however - for instance, Cornell is in a small, isolated city, and the others have bigger-time athletics.</p>
<p>You might also want to look at University of Michigan.</p>
<p>Does she want to stay in the mid Atlantic area? Does the fact that Penn is in a city affect what she likes. Is she considering going premed? </p>
<p>It's easy to come up with a list of peer schools to Penn. Most of them would end up being highly selective colleges. What is going to be difficult is finding a safety school both in the sense of most likely accepting your D and your being able to afford it. Once you have that in the pocket, you can go to town with other choices.</p>
<p>Also just because she loves Penn does not mean she is ready to eliminate other school that may not be like Penn, if she has not checked out other types. My kids liked all kinds of very different schools. Would Villanova, or Temple or Drexel be likely choices as well? Or Swarthmore or Haverford or St Joseph or Lasalle? </p>
<p>Some school similar to Penn would be Northwestern, Tufts, BC, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, NYU, CMU, Columbia, Brown, Georgetown, GW, Pitt, Emory, Georgia Tech, Rice, UChicago, Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>She also really liked Emory, Duke and Tufts. It's hard to find a safety that is comparable. She looked at Haverford and Swarthmore and found them too small (I know they are not safeties). She will look at Cornell, Rochester, Brown, U Mass, Wash U.
Thanks.</p>
<p>Oh, and Michigan too. She will go to any part of the country really.</p>
<p>The idea is to find something similar to Penn that is not as pricey (if cost is an issue) and as selective. Maybe Pitt or GW or Temple?</p>
<p>Last time I checked, GW was as expensive as Penn.</p>
<p>Safer schools... Hmmm...
Rochester is great; glad it is on her list.
I was going to suggest Pitt as a possibility. I like the Michigan and CMU ideas too.<br>
I have heard there is particularly good school spirit at Wake Forest.</p>
<p>She liked Penn and Tufts and Emory and Duke. Hmmm....</p>
<p>What majors is she considering?</p>
<p>Michigan is pretty expensive OOS and GW does have merit money. OP has not mentioned whether they are likely to be eligible for fin aid or if they need merit options. </p>
<p>It'll be easy to find the match and reach schools. It's no fun looking for safeties after rolling those familiar names of colleges out of one's mouth.</p>
<p>In which state is she in-state?</p>
<p>She lives in
MA</p>
<p>She's thinking about Premed/bio/psych. She didn't love UNC so I am not sure if she would like Wake Forest. For now, I want to take cost out of the picture....and will add it in later after she gets her list.</p>
<p>Emory, Duke and Tufts are all extremely competitive as well. A lot will depend on her SATs. Is she in a competitive high school? Where does she fall in her high school class?</p>
<p>Wake Forest, UNC, Emory, Duke, Tufts, UPenn all selective to higly selective schools. Let's look for the safeties. Cherry picking is fun and easy.</p>
<p>Charliesmom- I notice you compared Wake with UNC above. Wake has only 4400 undergrads compared to UNC Chapel Hill's 28,000. I think they'd feel very different.</p>
<p>The conventional CC wisdom is indeed to build your list from the bottom up.</p>
<p>Does U Mass have rolling or early regular admission, and would she consider attending? We found that having an early acceptance to an excellent state school was a great stress reliever and allowed our son to focus on his top picks for his other apps. That worked for him because the state school was truly tops in his intended field of study.</p>
<p>Pitt could be a good safety.</p>
<p>Her high school is extremely competitive-she's taking all honors and APs. They don't have class rank, but I am sure she's in the top 10%. She needs to look at UMass-they have an honors college with a good reputation. It's also quite large.</p>