Thanks all for the great suggestions! I honestly had not heard/thought about Rochester before (had to look it up on map) and will look into it further. Among the more interesting suggestions that sound potentially appealing - Carnegie Mellon (we have a cousin who teaches there but I’ve always thought of it as a STEM school), Emory and Tulane. Possibly Emerson but will need to look a bit further at that. We know quite a few people at/from Wesleyan so perhaps that’s worth a closer look but I think it may end up feeling too small/remote despite the good film program (which hadn’t heard about). American U - the comment about needing to show interest rings true; son’s friend applied there last year with similar credentials as my son and he was waitlisted at Am U but got into other schools that were even more of a reach; my theory re: Am U was that they were yield protecting and didn’t think the kid was really interested. Again, b/c of solid UC/other state univ options, I think we don’t feel a need to play that game with a school like Am U.
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