Looking for more match colleges; I feel lost on what is a match [WV resident, 4.0, rank 5, for sociology & dance]

We need more clarity than this. Are you eligible for need-based aid? What’s your actual budget that you can pay each year? Penn State is pretty expensive OOS.

You already have Wake Forest on your list; what does their Net Price Calculator show? Net Price Calculator And is the projection affordable?

If you like Wake and would get sufficient aid there, definitely consider University of Richmond. They have dance-specific scholarships that don’t even require you to be a dance major, although I think recipients have to do a dance minor. Performing arts are terrific and well-supported there. Again, run the NPC.

If you’d consider west coast, Scripps College has a fantastic dance department and has all the academic opportunities you are looking for. (Sociology would be an off-campus major through Pomona or Pitzer, but that is very very easy to do; a dual major with dance would work very well, and you could do a single senior thesis combining the two.) Of course, this is another school where the NPC will show whether it would be affordable.

Dickinson could be another to look at - a little less reachy than the others mentioned, but still meets need.

If you have a clear favorite and the financial aid projection is favorable, applying ED2 could be smart. Wake, Richmond, Dickinson and Scripps all offer ED2, and those are just representative options; I’m sure there are other good ones that I’m not thinking of right now.