Very possible, but my South kid tells me that it’s way too far to go to any of the North serveries, duh. 
Don’t rule out William and Mary.
Yes the food sucks, but it is getting better and they are building new dining facilities and have a new food vendor. Food was important to my daughter too, but she gave it up for WM 
and it has been an amazing year and a half for her there.
Your stats are almost exact to my daughters (IB school, similar classes, test scores, and GPA). She is a double major at WM (biology and conservation). Her roommate is a history and film major. Very different paths but both love it there. Small class sizes, safe campus, attentive professors, and amazing opportunities.
Our daughter was accepted to WM, UVA (fyi their food is the same as WM), VT, Penn State, UMass Amherst (they give serious money and have great food), JMU and U of Vermont. Given the similarities in your location, classes and tests scores, I would think you would have a great shot at each of these schools.
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My daughter LOVED the food her freshmen year but then it got rough during covid. She feels it has been getting better though each year.
And the food in Houston itself is fantastic.
Thank you all so much for all of the advice! Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you guys - Wednesdays have always been my busy days so I didn’t have much time to give you all the proper and well-thought-out response you deserve! So, I had a little extra time today between finishing up some homework and I decided to put together a list compiling your suggestions and some outside research.
Okay current (now updated!) list with suggestions added!
- Safety - Denver, CNU, College of Charleston, Syracuse, IU, Pitt (Honors?), Fordham
- Likely - Richmond, VT, William and Mary, St. Olaf, Mount Holyoke (TE), UGA, Dickinson (TE)
- Match - UVA, Bryn Mawr?, Case Western, Macalester, BU, W&L
- Reach - Rice, Duke, Georgetown, Cornell, Emory, Vanderbilt, possibly Princeton?
1st small note: I am placing Richmond as a Likely due to the fact that after asking around (re: outside research - asked the janitor and parent’s coworker who both have kids who go to Richmond) I found out that faculty member kids get a significant bonus in admission
2nd small note: I moved W&L to match and not safety because I talked with their music department and they seem very pro me going there
3rd small note: I am taking the SAT again in April because it is a school-required event, but should I consider taking the ACT?
Some people do better on the ACT, some the SAT. Of course your SAT is already very good, but if you wanted to try out the ACT and it would not be too big of a distraction, I’d feel free.
Edit: Oh, Georgetown in particular requires you to report all scores. I would not be overly concerned about that in your score range, but it is probably worth knowing about it.
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Even if your categorizations are a tad off, you certainly have many you’ll get into.
You have a 1520. I don’t see the need to take the other test. Or another SAT beyond the required one.
Good luck. It’s looks great.
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As a candid opinion, by your criterion of an academic culture, this list seems somewhat random.
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I hope it isn’t too bad! I mostly just used colleges suggested by the thread and colleges close to me! do you have any you think I should eliminate?
Thank you so much for all of your help with picking out colleges (as well as everyone else - seriously you guys have been such a help in raising my expectations of myself). How do you suggest I change the categories?
Personally, I think you did a great job. Now, there are some inconsistencies but it doesn’t mean they are wrong. By inconsistency, I mean you have some super large, super small, etc. And BU might be a reach…but it doesn’t matter…you have such great variety.
I would triple check with mom/dad on the “Richmond” benefit. Even though they’ve saved, I’d make sure they are ok at another that’s not in their discount program.
But list wise - you have many safeties. Here’s the thing with safeties - and you don’t know all the schools yet (i.e. having been there), but you want to be sure you’re not just admitted - but happy to attend. Safeties, IMHO, are the most important schools on your list.
So with 27 schools on your list - from that sense you’ll need to cull. But it’s ok. My daughter started with 109, ended up applying to 21 (which is too many). As you visit some schools this summer - you might start making decisions on size or urbanness, etc. that start to alter/shrink your list.
So I like what you have personally.
Ultimately, what you’ll want will matter most.
Hopefully you’ll be able to visit some schools over the next few months…that always adds clarity and then you’ll see schools fall off your list.
And if you decide to add some, that’s ok too…you might find some on your own that you’d love - vs. what others recommended.
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Agree-BU is a reach if applying regular decision and would also put UVA in the reach category. Even in state, acceptance rate was only @13 percent for regular decision last cycle.
Much higher acceptance rate if you apply ED.
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I agree that I think you have a good mix of schools here. I tend to talk about chances for admission rather than reach/match/likely/safety because people have different definitions, especially for “match” schools. But if I was going to move any schools around I’d probably move William & Mary to match, BU to perhaps a reach, and I’d inquire with others more about UGA, as I’ve heard that admission is becoming much more difficult. Also, if a strong applicant like yourself wants an admission to Case Western, make sure to show a lot of demonstrated interest, otherwise you’re likelier to end up with a waitlist or rejection.
I think that doing more visits will help you to figure out what you want out of your college experience. Another thing you may want to consider is to create a four-year college plan of the courses you’d need to take at two different schools, say a school where you’re likely to take four classes per semester (probably like Bryn Mawr, Princeton, and others on your list) vs. a school where you would take five (or more) classes per semester (like IU, UGA, among others). As you fill out a sample schedule with distribution and major requirements, you may find yourself having a definite preference for one type of schedule over another (I certainly did). Thus, if you do end up having a strong preference, it’s a way to eliminate a number of schools on your list and zero in on what you want.
I think you’ve been very thoughtful about your college search process so far and look forward to hearing how it continues to evolve!
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Just chiming in to say I agree with all this, and also just to note I think if you take this list as a starting point and starting reviewing department pages, outlining curriculums, doing some visits, and so on, and then start refining your preferences, not only will some colleges drop off the list, but perhaps some will emerge as possible additions. And the people around here are great for that–the more specific you can be about what you might be looking for, the more suggestions you can get.
Eventually you have to end with a reasonably practical list, but I just wanted to mention I think from this point lists can still end up evolving quite a bit, and that is all fine. It is really a process of self-discovery as much as learning about colleges.
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In my opinion, your list seems to have departed to an extent from your titular criterion of “academic culture.” Rather than suggesting you eliminate some of your choices, I’ll suggest that you continue to generate new ideas through research and inquiry. To the extent that you associate academic culture with student profile, you also may benefit from considering selectivity. For this, this site, which offers a selectivity ranking, may be helpful:
As a positive example, Swarthmore’s selectivity rank of 18th nationally probably fairly reflects its academic culture and its often brilliant students. In other cases, inferences connecting academic culture with selectivity may be more challenging to make, however.
@merc81 You’ve shared this website a couple of times and I’m intrigued but can’t get it to actually function in any browser (e.g. get the table to sort, or download the data, or even fully load the table). Wondering if this issue is specific to me or if others have experienced it as well.
Actually, others have experienced difficulty in loading the site. For a full view, this contribution by @tsbna44 should be clarifying: WalletHub College Rankings - #18 by tsbna44. Alternatively, you can use the search bar in the original site for colleges of particular interest.
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It has been mentioned, and Tufts should check all your boxes. Great IR program, always ranked top food, renowned acappella groups, and New England Conservatory affiliation. Vibe sounds right.
Only caveat is affordability.
You have so many good options, especially with tuition exchange.
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I note that half of WalletHub’s selectivity rating is admission rate. Personally, I really, really do not believe in using that as a selectivity measure for college choice purposes, because I think that is really more a popularity measure than a selectivity measure. And popularity/admission rate is demonstrably in part a function of things like fame and location. And so using a low admission rate as a positive factor in college choice is basically pushing you toward colleges that are harder to get into because, among other things, they are famous colleges in popular locations.
So personally, I use very different ways of identifying more academicky colleges. Although not entirely unproblematic themselves, I prefer using things like PhD feeder rates, particularly per capita. See for example these links:
Or that Foreign Policy article about top IR colleges, since IR is not included separately in the widely-available PhD data.
And when you do that sort of thing, it turns out there are many relatively academicky colleges in that sense that are not among the most famous colleges in the most popular locations.
And those are the real finds to me. Everyone already knows that MIT is great for certain fields and also very popular and very hard to get into–#1 in Selectivity per WalletHub. But Carleton, say, has nearly the same per capita PhD placement rate as MIT, and it is only #50 by Selectivity as measured by WalletHub. Which is largely because Carleton is a small independent college located in Minnesota, but that makes it a great find for people who want an academicky college and yet also a better chance of admission than they might have at, say, Swarthmore, a coastal college.
Similarly, Yale is #7 by WalletHub’s Selectivity rating, and Princeton #12, but you know who is right between them on the per capita PhD list? Oberlin, #75. In part because Oberlin is outside Cleveland, and to the extent coastal people know about it at all, they know about the conservatory, and not the fact it is actually also an academically excellent college.
And so on.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents on how to build a better list of academicky colleges, one which can help you actually find those not-so-obvious possibilities that are outside the most-famous-in-popular-locations box.
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To clarify, I wouldn’t necessarily make distinctions in this vicinity of selectivity. However, I might make a distinction between this group of schools and one with a selectivity ranking (however reasonably determined) in, say, the 200s. Moreover, what may be true in instances may not apply to the OP’s list in general — a list that, as stated earlier, appears somewhat random to me with respect to academic culture.
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