<p>I am an upcoming senior with good grades and fairly good test scores. I have been contemplating what schools i should apply to early. So far I have been interested in Duke and UPenn, as they have good engineering, research and medicine programs. </p>
<p>Assuming that I am well qualified enough to be strongly considered, which schools should I apply to? </p>
<p>I am interested in either going into medicine or biomedical engineering, and I want the college to be well suited for research. Size doesn't really matter for me. </p>
<p>Other colleges I am interested in include Northwestern, CWRU, UC Berkeley, Duke, UPenn. Any input would be very helpful! Thanks :D</p>
<p>You can apply to CWRU EA, so no problem there, unless one of your other schools restrict it. No early applications to any UC school. Any other schools would depend on your stats - depending on those, some applications may be a waste of your time, others may be worth a shot. And there’s always the issue of money - if FA is an issue, ED may be a mistake, but not always. YMMV.</p>
<p>What can your family afford? Ucb OOS will cost a pretty penny</p>
<p>@MrMom62 I have heard from some graduating seniors that you can back out of binding ED decisions if you cant afford to attend that college. And i think my stats are pretty good to get into most of those schools although it might be a reach. 35 ACT, 2370 SAT, 3rd class rank (idk my exact gpa but its around 4.6 or 4.7 ish), President our quiz team that qualified for nationals, internship with materials science professor. I hope i didnt sound braggish i just want to get some educated info for my situation :/</p>
<p>@"Erin’s Dad" We are upper middle class I would say. Probably 20-30k a year would be doable i think. Does UCB give any merit or financial aid for OOS? </p>
<p>With those stats, you can apply ED or SCEA pretty much anywhere.</p>
<p>Yes, if the FA doesn’t add up, you can back out, but this tends to be a fairly rare option. I think I saw the numbers on my daughter’s school the other day and the number who decline an ED offer are remarkably small - I think it was on the order of under 5%, and may have been as low as 2-3%. Just don’t go in thinking you can automatically hit the “eject button” claiming insufficient aid - they probably have a lot of hoops for you to jump through to actually get out of an ED offer. They will probably make you sweat a little, and by then, your chances anywhere else may be gone.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the help! This whole college application stuff is a little cumbersome to understand. </p>
<p>Yes you can turn down an ED offer if the FA is insufficient. The issue with this is you can’t compare it with other school’s offers. If you turn it down and it ends up being your best offer you can’t go back. If you need to compare offers then don’t use ED.</p>