College list and ranking schools

Wilson98
Fri, 28 Jul 2017 17:41:29 +0000

There a lot of factors that affect selectivity other than average scores, so your system seems to underestimate the difficulty of Tier 1, and make distinctions between Tier 2 and 3 that may not be that meaningful.

It does seem you have few truly “match” schools, as in “I might not get in, but I have a good shot.” Just going by the US News university list, you have the #3, 5, and 8 schools on it, and then go down to BU at 39, GW at 56, Syracuse at 60, Rutgers at 70, and all the others higher. So besides the state schools, you have maybe three high reaches, two matches, two low matches, and zero high matches or low reaches. I’d suggest adding a school or two in from the 20 to 50 range of US News, which would go from mid-reach to mid-match for you. Besides those mentioned above, it could be schools like Northeastern or Rochester, or else some good liberal arts colleges that are matches.

You also should consider money, as BU and GW are known for not being great with financial aid, while some schools that are somewhat more selective may have better financial aid. Really, really selective schools should be fine with financial aid, but that doesn’t help if you don’t get in to them.