OP - IMHO, a willingness to spend four years at any of these schools, without merit aid, reveals an admirable commitment on the part of your family to provide the best for you within their means. Factor in the all the trouble you’ve gone to flying clear across the continent to visit each campus in order to compare them, and it just seems silly to leave it all up to a few points on the ACT scale or the USNews poll. Even the magazine editors, if you catch them in an unguarded moment (after maybe a few drinks), will tell you that’s the wrong way to use the polls.