on target or start over? PLS advise!

College Search & Selection
#1

<p>I'm going crazy with my list of schools. Here are my stats:</p>

<p>SAT I 760R, 800M, 710W
SAT II: USHist 730, Bio 750, math II 800
APs so far: USHist 5, Bio 5, US Gov 5, Comp Gov 4</p>

<p>gpa weighted 4.245 extremely competitive public school
class size: 650</p>

<p>next year: 4 more APs: Spanish, Euro Hist, Environment Sci, Calc A/B
plus honors Physics and honors English
EC: Eagle Scout, Emer Med Tech (EMT), Debate club, Track, marching band, safe rides (Red Cross)</p>

<p>leadership: EIC student-run newspaper, features editor in school-sponsored paper, Scouts</p>

<p>Awards: NHS, Debate (2), State science fairs (4), and Model UN contest (sent to DC)
weaknesses: gpa (slow start) and dropped band this year (sax)</p>

<p>schools:
UofChicago
Duke
UofMich
Georgetown
Duke
WashU (st louis)
UPenn</p>

<p>safety:
macalester
Pomona
Colgate?
Conn College ?
Trinity (CT)</p>

<p>Question: are my "schools" good matches? My safety schools are all Liberal Arts, but my preferred is Nat'l universities. Any suggestions for safety schools? Pls reply!</p>

#2

<p>I don't think that you can consider Macalester, Pomona, Colgate, or Trinity are safeties.</p>

#3

<p>zwee, your safeties are not safeties. Just because they are smaller than the universities on your list doesn't make them any less selective. If you're sure that you want a medium to large university then you should find a few less selectives that fit that description.</p>

<p>If you'd like to include some small LACs in your list then you need to re-assign them: Pomona would be a reach. The others matches.</p>

<p>I'd certainly look into applying to Michigan early in the process under their non-binding rolling admissions procedure. If accepted, that could be your safety. Alternately you could apply EA to Chicago or Georgetown.</p>

#4

<p>Pomona would be just as hard to get into as any of your other universities, lol. Maybe you meant safety in the sense of if you got into one of those you would be happy anyway?</p>

#5

<p>I don't see any "safeties" on your list, except (possibly) Connecticut College. Like momrath, I would call Pomona a "reach" (only 16% accepted) and Colgate, Macalester, and Trinity as "matches."</p>

#6

<p>Perhaps you should look into some of the top public universities(other than UMich) as safeties. Like Wisconsin, UNC, Virginia, Texas, Washington, Minnesota, Florida, Indiana, etc. Most of those aren't easy to get into, but they're less selective than many of the schools you listed. And I imagine with a near perfect SAT score, you should have a really good shot at all of them. Maybe you're not looking for a big public, but it's just a suggestion.</p>

#7