Suggest Safeties?

kabizzle
Sun, 21 Nov 2010 12:30:56 +0000

So right now I have a list that I’m decently confident about but I only have one safety (which is basically guaranteed). I’d like to add at least 1 or 2 more just in case. My current list:
University of Pennsylvania (ED)
Rice University
Stanford University (uber reach)
Northwestern University
University of Southern California
Washington University in St. Louis
University of Michigan
Vanderbilt University
University of Wisconsin - Madison (in-state safety)

Now, I understand fully that NONE of these schools are guaranteed but my high school’s relationship with Madison along with my test scores and GPA mean that it’s a pretty good safety for me. Now, onto the meat. I have a 2140 SAT (760 math and 690 on the other two sections) and a 3.8 GPA at a crazy difficult private high school in Wisconsin in lots of AP classes. I’m a National Merit Semi-Finalist and my EC’s are decent.

Criteria for the safeties:
-Obviously, for a safety, my test scores should be in the top 25-50% and it should have a pretty high acceptance rate
-Must have a football team (hopefully the team is at least decent)
-Should have opportunities for pre-med students (i.e. a hospital or
-Needs to have an engineering program (biomedical engineering if possible but not strictly necessary)
-Warm weather preferable if possible but not necessary
-Money is not an issue at all
-Size isn’t an issue and it can be public or private
-If at all possible no application fee would be nice but it’s not necessary

Right now I’ve been thinking about Case Western Reserve University. Can anyone suggest others?