Is my college list viable?

TheGreyKing
Sun, 16 Sep 2018 03:09:11 +0000

Since you asked, I looked up colleges with biomedical engineering majors and compared them with what you wrote and what I know about those colleges. I think U of Florida and U of Alabama are good safety choices if you like them. Here are some matches to consider. Some of these will be almost safeties for you, but not as risk free as the state colleges because they are “holistic” in admission and thus your great stats are not the near-guarantee they are at the state universities you named.

Matches:
University of Rochester
Lehigh
Lafayette
Trinity (in Connecticut)
Bucknell
Union

Additional safeties to consider:
U of Pittsburgh
Penn State
SUNY Binghamton
SUNY Stony Brook (but there are a lot of commuters in this school and you are an out of state student, so investigate the social setting with care despite the strong program there)

Two colleges named by other posters, Swarthmore and Harvey Mudd, are terrific choices— both are reaches for anyone because of the small admissions percentages. Someone mentioned Brandeis, which I agree is a good match for you in many ways, but it does not have any engineering majors per se, just a 3:2 program, unlike the other colleges named.

And although earlier I expressed some concerns about Northeastern as a safety, your high school’s Naviance data sounds good, and you are coming from Florida, whereas the students I know who were waitlisted/rejected were coming from a Long Island high school where about 20 students applied to Northeastern.