If W&M will remain your top choice, then keeping more than one or two colleges more selective than W&M on your list may not make a lot of sense. For perspective on relative selectivity, this site places schools in selectivity categories:
W&M places in the “very selective” category.
As long as it will definitely hit budget, if it is your #1, absolutely apply ED to W&M.
I would note and I don’t know if there’s anything here, but if you are male, it might be another boost. Less males apply overall and the acceptance rate is noticeably higher - about 40% vs. 34% for females.
You noted many from your school with your stats get in - so that + an ED might just be the oomph you need to give that a tad more certainty.
Personally, having been at all 5 and we’ll take JMU out because you don’t like it - but I think CNU skews more W&M than the others in state - and it’s gorgeous to boot!!
I put the health sciences above - that with Poli Sci and I think you’d have a nice worst case fallback at low cost.
I’m so jealous of those that live in VA - it might have the best variety of fantastic colleges (size, beauty, excellence) - even moreso than CA.
I get the feeling that you are overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices that are out there in terms of prestigious LACs. There are an awful lot of them that operate under the radar of even the most sophisticated families. To address this, I’ve created a thread entitled, “An Outsider’s Guide to National LACs” with an initial list of 29 schools listed alphabetically with a few sentences designed to give a quick impression that will motivate you to do further research:
They span all parts of the country; they are all expensive; they all have fairly deep pockets in terms of need-based financial aid. AND, they all have pre-med programs.
Thank you so much!
This is a good instinct. You said cost <$60k but that’s a big range and $60k is a very big portion of an annual $160k income. So I think you’ll have to run a lot of NPCs — because it can vary widely, from one school saying $20k and another $60k. And the resulting cost estimates may heavily figure into how you and your parents feel about those schools.