I am considering using one of the above listed schools as my reach. If you want my complete stats I’ll post them but with a 2200 SAT and 4.5 WGPA I’m pretty much in the mix for all the above schools. Here is what I think so far. Financial aid is pretty important, family makes 80k, 2 siblings in college. PredMed with Physics or ChemE as a major, goal is to be a dentist
Middlebury (8k a year)
Pros: cheapest according to NPC, D3 sports
Cons: location, no merit aid
Georgetown (10k a year)
Pros: 2nd cheapest according to NPC, prestigious, location, merit aid given to 40% of freshman need-aid recipients
Cons: heard it’s a very expensive school (true???)
JHU (11k a year)
Pros: most prestigious (I think, at least for science), urban location, D3
Cons: most expensive according to NPC
What do you think?
If you are using only one of these, then plan on going to one of your match schools.
You have good stats that you should be proud of but applying to one school in this bracket is like applying to none. If there is something else about you that is important, then Middlebury will most likely find the value.
You are an average applicant to these three and your chance is average at best, which is very low.
If you are not being recruited for sports figure the acceptance rate for regular students is much lower than the average for Middlebury. The others are much larger so the acceptance rate is more stable across recruits and non-recruits.
So, if you want to attend a school of this caliber, applying to one will likely not yield anything.
Apply to all three. Worry about choosing once you have some acceptances.
“Georgetown … heard it’s a very expensive school”
Georgetown does well in USNWR’s “Great Schools, Great Prices,” at 23rd in its category.
@merc81 thanks for clarifying. GU is need-blind an meets 100%. I now think the complaints referred to well-off students, because GU gives mostly need-based aid
Pretty sure all of these schools are need-blind and meet 100% demonstrated need. I know Middlebury is.
If you want to be a dentist, keep this in mind (it should probably be the determining factor 
). Steve Hauschka - the kicker for the Seattle Seahawks, who went to the Super Bowl the past two years, and who scored more points in winning the 2014 Super Bowl than Peyton Manning - graduated from Middlebury. He had every intention of becoming a dentist. He was even admitted to Tufts Dental school (pretty sure that’s right), but instead became an NFL kicker and now makes well over 3 million/year. So beware, you may have every intention of becoming a dentist at Middlebury, but through no fault of your own you may get sidetracked and become a professional football player. You have been warned!
in addition, it’s silly to judge prestige at this level. They’re all highly prestigious.
Agree in principle with @jackrabbit14, but am going to suggest that the student bodies are different enough that it suggests you may want to do a little more thinking about what you want from your college.
Also, head’s up, I have known JHU to give great aid first year and then 2nd or 3rd year pare it way back. When your sibs graduate you may get hit with a very big cut in aid.
Apply to all three, as well as 3-5matches and 2 safeties. Decide in the Spring based on best value (ie., not “cheapest” but “best return on investment”).
Why these 3? Middlebury is fairly different from JHU and Georgetown.
Neither Middlebury nor Hopkins give merit aid.
Hopkins grants fewer than 20 merit scholarships to incoming freshmen plus 2 to engineering students.
In the unlikely event you do get one of these merit scholarships, it probably will only displace an equal amount of need-based aid.
For a realistic shot at big merit scholarships, you need to focus on colleges much less selective than JHU. However, unless it’s a full ride or possibly a full tuition grant, your net cost may not be much cheaper than it would be after need based aid from one of your 3. For a family income of $80K, with 2 siblings in college, I would think you could expect more than $50K/y from these or other so-called “full need” schools.