Thanks to all for the input!
@dtrain1027 About reaches and matches, they’re based on the acceptance stats published by my son’s school. No students with his GPA and scores were rejected by William & Mary or by Villanova. In fact Villanova accepts quite a few students from his school with lower stats than his, 90 averages and 29 ACTs/ 1300 SATs. Typically, 100+ out of 400 graduates from his school apply to Nova and around 60% are accepted. But yes, he’s not applying to Nova because we know he won’t get merit.
@PengsPhils Only one student with his GPA and scores was accepted by BC; it must have been someone with a compelling hook, a statistical outlier, because many students with higher scores were rejected. The same goes for Northeastern; I was surprised to see how competitive NEU has become.
About BU, I really don’t see that he’s competitive for merit when the average ACT of accepted students is 32, and he has a 33.
I hadn’t thought about UVM at all. @prof2dad that’s quite a statistic for UVM grads and the CPA exam! I have to say that for a “public Ivy” their 69% acceptance rate was higher than I expected but if they have a good Honors college that’s a plus.
@happy1 I realize that St John’s isn’t in the same league as the other schools but the HS insists on students applying to a “local safety” in case anything catastrophic happens to the student or family, healthwise or financially, and it was a free application.
@LuckyCharms913, re your question “is $35,000 just for tuition, or does that include R&B and fees?”, the answer is tuition. Of course if we can get tuition a bit lower than that, great.
@HootieA I’ve suggested Scranton a number of times and he’s said no. We spent 3 days there on a family retreat 5 years ago so we know the campus. We liked it but he didn’t. But I think it’s worth giving it 1 more try.
@mommdc I’ve also suggested those 3 schools. His HS GC said that Pitt was better for sciences than for business so we didn’t pursue it; Miami U and Ohio were both “I don’t like the area”. (He likes U of Miami but with their accepted students profile I don’t know that he’s competitive for merit