What colleges should I apply to?

Location. You might rethink where you go. Have you thought about transportation. How are you getting all your stuff there? If you can’t bring it all home over the summer you need to rent storage space.   Dorms and campus close over the school breaks. How are you getting home? Do you need to fly? Can your parents afford to fly you home for Thanksgiving, Winter and Spring breaks. Where is the nearest airport to school? How are you getting g back and forth from campus to the airport, what is the cost. Do you want to spend an entire day getting home 

Cost to attend. With your grades you could get an academic scholarship. My daughter got into all five schools she applied to. Including g two highly ranked schools. But one gave her a significant scholarship and that is the one she went to.

  Note most applications and scholarships will want your unweighted cumulative gpa. 

How is the university for the major you want? Harvard is not the best for all majors. 

You need to visits schools. I took my daughter to nine schools. She found out she didn’t want to attend school in a major city, we live near Chicago.    And she didn’t want a large major university (like Ohio State) 

Butler university in Indiana looked perfect on paper. But when we visited the campus neither of us liked it at all. Nothing wrong with the school, just not for her.   Harvard and Wash U are going to be very different.  You can get a feel for the place and if it is going to be a good fit for you. 

Location does matter, size of the school, atmosphere, culture, weather.  You will be living there for four years. Will you have a car? Look at parking locations and cost on campus. No car, how is public transportation in the area?

You are going about this backwards. Because you are a very good student, you can get into about 3,000 of the 4-year universities in the U.S.  Therefore you need to think very hard about the attributes of the school that will help you thrive as well as the cost. Here are the things to consider:

1. How much can or does you family want to pay for your to attend? 

2. How much need-based financial aid are you likely to get?

3. How important is getting a merit-based scholarship.

4. Do you want to the one of the smartest students, middle of the pack, or at the bottom of your class in terms of academics?

5. How big of school do you want to attend?  Big lectures or small seminars? 

6. What major do you want and how good at that department at various schools? What type of research opportunities are important to you?

7. What type of housing do you want?  

8. What type of campus culture are you looking for?  A school with Greek Life and D1 football and parties or a school with none of those?

9. What weather can you put up with?  Would you really be happy in south Texas or Alabama or Washington state?

10. How far do you want to be from home?  Do you want to be in a few hours drive or are you okay with driving and taking a couple of different flights?

In all honesty, you probably aren't that strong of a candidate for any of the most selective universities that reject 90-95% of most applicants.  If you really want to go to Harvard and you are okay with being rejected, feel free to apply.  Also understand that some students who are used to being the top performer lose self-esteem when faced with a class full of other top performers and valedictorians.  Some kids do better when they attend a university where they are still part of the top-tier academically.  

As a up-state New Yorker you might have a huge culture shock going to the Deep South or the west even if the schools like UT, Rice, Emory, Clemson, etc. might be a good academic fit.  Even schools in New Englands can be very different from one another.  Does Amherst appeal to you or are you more a Tuffs person?  Would you go to NYU or prefer Barnard?

Use a website like Niche or BigFuture to do some deep digging.  You can see what the average UNWEIGHTED GPA and test scores are for admitted students as well as get some idea of the size and culture.

A reach for you is any of the schools that admit less than 15% of applicants.

A target school is one where your GPA and SAT are in line or a bit above the average for admitted students.

A safety school would be one  where your GPA and SAT are  above the average for admitted students and the admission rate is over 40%.  These may be schools, where you could earn an academic scholarship.  

99% of your college admission chances are your SAT and your GPA.  Your actual unweighted GPA on a 4.00 scale.  Your 4.57 weighted GPA doesn't matter at all.

Assuming your actual GPA is on par with your 1490 SAT, you'll be accepted to almost any college.  You don't need to worry about all that other stuff unless you're applying to some stuffy exclusive private school.

There are literally thousands of colleges and universities that you can choose.  Without any suggestion of what your goal career is, or where you would like to live for the next four years, any recommendation of schools is useless.