Stevens Institute of Technology. A hidden gem, IMO.
Great school, great faculty, great location (right across the river from Manhattan, and they have an amazing high rise dorm that just opened 2 years ago).
They have very good industry partnerships too for their co-op programs.
William and Mary, 33%. Mid sized university with a beautiful, walkable campus. Smart students taught by accessible professors, many new academic and dormitory spaces including a recently opened arts complex. Perfect setting to spend four years. Both of mine attended and were very happy there.
Next to Colonial Williamsburg and students get free admission which is a nice perk.
Note that is W&M’s overall acceptance rate. But as a Virginia public school their admit rate is much higher in-state that OOS, so OOS applicants will have a lower rate. I suspect it’s still about the 20% threshold being discussed here. Love that campus.
Not mentioned yet:
Rhodes College - very beautiful campus, strong students. Good merit. Amazing for prelaw and premed. Doesn’t get much love because it is in Memphis. However, if you know how to behave in a big city like NY, Baltimore or Atlanta, it is not an issue.A lot of culture.
Gettysburg College -was absolutely perfect for DD with top scholarship.
My daughter graduated from Kenyon College (acceptance rate about 31%) last May and had a fantastic experience. Very rigorous academics, supportive professors, lots of individual attention, many creative outlets (theater and music groups, dance clubs, orchestras, etc.), strong foreign languages program with a possibility of working as a TA, a beautiful sports facility. A gorgeous campus on a hill. Friendly, interesting students. Merit aid and pretty generous need-aid grants are available.
Other colleges in this acceptance rate range she liked a lot and considered seriously were Macalester, St. Olaf, and Oberlin (as well as Grinnell, whose acceptance rate was closer to 20% I believe back in 2020 but has dropped since).
Wofford (59%) in SC and Rollins (40%) in FL are worth a good look!
Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX (about 30 min from Austin airport). According to SCOIR, admit rate is 39%.
Small LAC (1483 students). Great auto merit scholarships. This was a top contender for my college freshman. Art & music scholarships also available even if you’re not an art or music major.
Also Centre College in Danville, KY. 54% admit rate. This, too, is a small LAC (1357 students). About an hour away from Lexington, KY. The college is a liberal enclave in a red state. Everyone on campus & in the town super friendly. Very safe campus. You can fill your fine art general ed requirement by taking a glass blowing class. Really great auto merit scholarships + excellent art & music scholarships for non-majors. This school is also committed to 1st gen students and has a lot of supports for them. Really good diversity, which one might not usually find in a town of ~18,000 in the middle of Kentucky. Really active alumni network. Everybody takes a 3-week class in January before the spring semester starts.
Austin College
In Sherman, Tx, an hour from the Dallas airport. Acceptance rate 47%. Another small LAC. They’re working on an ABET certified engineering major, coming soon to a theater near you. 
Very good pre-health program, which is why my kid is attending there. Staff, students, professors all very accessible, very down to earth. Good diversity. Also very supportive of 1st gen students, there’s an organized group of 1st gen student mentoring that first year 1st gen students get assigned to.
Also has really good auto merit scholarships. School is test optional and they mean it. If you do in person visit after getting accepted, they add another $1k/ yr scholarship for 4 yr.
Guaranteed to graduate in 4 yr. Like the other 2 LACs I mentioned above, this school is big on “outside the classroom” learning experiences: internships, research w/professors (you basically just have to ask and they’ll say yes), job shadowing, etc. every student gets assigned a faculty mentor at the start of freshman year and they guide you through all of the course registration and everything else throughout your time there.
This is a school in which you will not fall through the cracks. AC has a good reputation in state of TX. Very active alumni network, which actively helps seniors land jobs in their major/field.
In same city as AC are 1 or 2 gigantic silicon chip plants. The college has relationships with hiring managers at both of them, so that’s super helpful if you want to major in business or computer science.
Their pre-law program has a pretty good reputation too.
AC has a 3 wk Jan Term. Freshman have to stay on campus for that but starting sophomore yr, you can do the rest of your Jan Terms off campus. The college’s board wants every student to be able to do one study abroad, so students are highly encouraged to apply for scholarships for that. The Jan Term study abroad options are super popular. Word on the street is that getting such a scholarship is easy the first time out.
Greek life is there if you want it but if you’re not into that, it’s truly no big deal and it won’t hurt your social life at all.
There’s a LOT of good honest collaboration between the depts on campus that handle student support services.
All freshmen have to take the Myers Briggs personality test to get assigned to a roommate. My kid has hit it off really well with her roommate and they’re getting along swimmingly.
Dining hall is all you can eat for whenever they’re open, which is pretty much all day. So if you want to go eat 6x/day, you won’t run out of “swipes.” They also take food allergies seriously so that’s helpful if your kid is in that boat.
Picking target schools is one of the biggest decisions applicants must make. I’m using <20% as a rule of thumb for schools that are a reach for anyone - even very top students. So, I set out to compile a list of schools which admit at a rate above 29%. Knowing that one man’s target is another man’s reach, I’ve worked down the list in bands of 10% from 29% to 69%. For the purposes of this thread, my interest is in small colleges of 1000 - 5000 in enrollment, using the definition of small colleges used by the Carnegie classifications (<5000). I’ve focused on colleges in the northern half of the Eastern Time Zone because that is where selective colleges of this type are most heavily concentrated.
The source I used only had admissions data from the 2023-24 freshman class. I’ve updated it where I knew of a discrepancy, but if anyone wants to offer an update, please feel free to provide corrected information. If a college is not on the list, that means that it was either outside the parameters of the enrollment range or of the acceptance range or both. So, here’s my list with acceptance rates and current enrollment, which I’ve rounded off:
20-29%
20% - Smith College (2500)
21% - Hillsdale College (1700)
23% - University of Richmond (3100)
23% - Skidmore College (2800)
29% - Kenyon College (1400)
30-39%
30% - Columbia University, School of General Studies (2200)
31% - Lafayette College (2800)
31% - Bryn Mawr College (1300)
32% - Franklin & Marshall College (1900)
32% - Bucknell University (3800)
33% - Fairfield University (5000)
33% - Oberlin College (3000)
33% - Lackawanna (1900)
33% - Berea College (1500)
34% - Trinity College (2200)
35% - Brandeis University(3700)
35% - Vaughan College of Aeronautics & Technology (1200)
36% - Emerson College (4200)
38% - Connecticut College (2000)
38% - Mount Holyoke College (2200)
40-49%
40% - Mercy College of Ohio 1100)
40% - Ohio Christian (1300)
42% - Clark University (2400)
43% - Dickinson College (2200)
43% - Stevens Tech (4100)
44% - Union College (2100)
48% - Bentley University (4300)
48% - Gettysburg College (2200)
49% - Providence College (4400)
50-59%
50% - Trocaire College (1000)
51% - Ohio Wesleyan University (1400)
52% - Bard College
52% - Southern Virginia University (1100)
52% - Parsons School of Design (4400)
53% - Pratt Institute (3600)
54% - Wooster College (1900)
54% - Ohio Northern University (2600)
54% - DePauw University (1800)
54% - Moravian University (2000)
54% - Coppin State (1800)
55% - Northwestern Michigan College (3100)
55% - Delaware State (5000)
56% - Centre College (1300)
57% - Hobart & William Smith (1600)
57% - Mount St. Joseph College (1400)
58% - St. Lawrence University (2100)
59% - Gordon College (1300)
Great list. Would just point out that both Parsons and Pratt require portfolios for admission, so admit rate at face value may not tell the whole story.
Good idea, but personally I would add looking in the Northern part of the Central time zone, as well as Pacific. That should catch many of the other smaller colleges in this zone often recommended here.
I think this (and the other threads about higher admit rate schools) is a great idea. I think it could be expanded to the South, though, too. Especially since there is a kind of northeastern bubble, where those are the only schools thought of.
There are a lot of smaller schools in Virginia, like Roanoke, Christopher Newport, etc. Many are in the ODAC (athletic conference).
If the OP decides to expand the geographical area, I hope it won’t be limited in any way.
(Rhodes, Furman, Wofford, Agnes Scott, Rollins, Eckerd, Stetson, Trinity (TX), Austin, Millsaps,…)
@Bill_Marsh, let us know your thoughts.
Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately doing this takes time, so I can only do it in chunks. I’d like to get to the other regions, but my next post will be on mid-size universities in the same region. I invite anyone else to post similar information in other regions.
Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time. 
Rather than start a new thread, I’ll post a similar list of possible target schools for mid size (5000 - 15,000) right here.
Again, I’m eliminating schools which are reaches for everyone (<20% acceptance rate) and looking at colleges in the 20% - 59% acceptance rate range. Any colleges not included are because they are outside either the enrollment range or the acceptance rate range.
There are fewer mid size colleges in this range than there were small colleges, so I’m only posting 2 bands. Again, I’m inviting anyone to correct me where I got it wrong. Here we go:
20%-39%
23% - Villanova University (7100)
29% - Case Western Reserve University (6200)
29% - Lehigh University (5800)
36% - University of Rochester (6700)
38% - SUNY Binghamton University (14,400)
38% - Purdue Northwest (5800)
40%-59%
44% - George Washington University (11,400)
47% - American University (7800)
50% - Berkeley College of Music (7600)
51% - SUNY Cartland (5900)
52% - Howard University (9800)
53% - Michigan Tech (5900)
54% - CUNY Brooklyn College (11,300)
55% - CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice (11,500)
56% - Fordham University (10,300)
58% - RPI (5900)
58% - Worcester Tech (5500)
58% - SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology (7800)
59% - SUNY New Paltz (6100)
59% - University of Vermont (12,200)
59% - University of Michigan - Dearborn (6100)
59% - CUNY York College (5900)
I updated the title to reflect the region of focus. (Even though I don’t consider OH, IN or MI as northeast, but it’s your thread! 
)
Thanks for the help! I’ve added “Nearby Midwest” to the title.
Thank you Bill for compiling this info. It’s very helpful!
Mod Note: A list of colleges in the North East and Midwest in this acceptance range has been merged for easier access. This is generally a no replies thread.