How did you decide which schools?
Most people talk about reach, realistic, and safety schools as well as using classifications like Top 10, Top 25, etc. I was wondering how everyone arrived at these labels or rankings. I'm trying to decide on a good spread of colleges for when I apply this coming year and want to incorporate a couple reach schools, some realistic ones, and of course a safety or two. I looked at US News and World Report rankings for Biology (specifically genetics) but am unsure of how indicative of actual "rank" these numbers are. Before seeing these rankings I had roughly 5 schools picked out that I wanted to apply to and ended up seeing them all ranked very closely around 20-25. I'm just worried about picking too many schools that may be considered a reach. How did all of you come to pick your array of grad schools that you all applied to? Did you not consider rank and applied to all the programs that interested you?