<p>Having gone to Yale I can say with certainty that there is no one right school for everyone. It makes me so upset when everyone lumps Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and others into the same pool. They are all great academically - some better in some subject areas than others. But they have totally different feels to them. Someone posted that Stanford has better weather. Even that is subjective. My D - who in full disclosure is going to Yale in the fall - wanted to go to school in New England - no option. Even as a Yale legacy, she had a good list of schools -Wesleyan, Vassar, Tufts, Bowdoin. We took the college tours (2,000 miles in 4 days) and saw most of them because I wanted her to see something besides Yale. She was in love with Wesleyan because it is the number one vegan college on the east coast (maybe the country) and because a lot of kids from her high school go there. I know she would have been very happy there if she had not gotten into Yale.</p>
<p>So, take the advice and find a school that is good for you. My daughter would never consider a southern school, one because it does not fit her ideal of what a campus looks like (snow, old, ivy) and because vegan options were not listed when she checked their dining menus.
Research what is right for you, you can get into one of the schools you named and be miserable. Good luck.</p>