Something that I wonder about: What is the plan with a degree in biology?
The first reason that I ask is that many students who start university as biology majors are at least considering being premed students, and thinking about possibly trying to attend medical school at some point.
This in turn brings up three issues. One is the medical school is expensive, and premed students really should budget for a full 8 years of university. Another issue is that there are a LOT of universities that are very good for premed students, and this definitely includes multiple SUNY and CUNY universities. The third issue is that the large majority of students who start off thinking “premed” end up doing something else. Some forms of something else are medicine-related, such as biomedical research. Some forms of “something else” could be very different (law, computer science, …).
By the way one daughter has a bachelor’s degree in biology. She briefly thought of being “premed”, but quickly discovered that she likes lab work and likes biomedical research. She is currently studying for a PhD.
As others have mentioned it would be helpful to try to get a better understanding of what your budget is. At least in our experience sometimes the schools with the most financial aid were also the most expensive before considering financial aid. The real issue is what the final cost comes out to be.
This is very good.
Your grades will be evaluated in the context of the high school that you are attending. This implies that your GPA is only slightly lower than is typical for students from your high school who typically attend Ivy League or equivalent highly ranked schools. However, these schools are reaches or high reaches even for the strongest students.
Three things pop out to me looking at your list of schools. One is that a lot of them are reaches. The second is that there is a range of different types of schools. The third issue is the lack of SUNY’s and CUNY’s on your list. I do not personally understand what you will get for example at U.Conn or Penn State (which are a very good universities) that you could not also get at a SUNY for a lower in-state cost.
As I mentioned there are a LOT of universities that are very good for premed students. Similarly there are a LOT of universities that are very good for students who intend to go on to biomedical research, or even who switch to an unrelated major (which is a common thing to do). A lot of universities will have good opportunities for premed students to get medical related experience, and other opportunities for students to instead work on various kinds of research projects (whether biomedical or something else). If you look at the students in various graduate programs (whether MD programs, or master’s degree or PhD programs or something else) they typically will have come from a very, very wide range of undergraduate schools.
You might want to think about what type of school would be most comfortable for you. Would you be happier at a large school, or at a smaller liberal arts college (such as Bowdoin). Would you prefer to be in a small town, a suburban area, in a city, or somewhere else? You might want to also think about how much travel you want to do. As one example, at least in my experience some students do travel across country or internationally for a bachelor’s degree, but it might be a bit more common to get a bachelor’s degree closer to home.
There are a lot of universities with very good research opportunities.
To me it looks like you are doing very well and you are starting to ask the right questions at pretty much the exact right time. The various contributors on this web site should be able to at least help to give you some questions and some ideas to think about.