Hm. UMass Amherst is pretty good…it’s a big, big school, and a big party school. Like the person said below me, the best thing about UMass Amherst is that you can take classes at the other 4 colleges in the consortium: Smith, Mount Holyoke (all-women’s schools–don’t count them out; they’re really great! Smith has more of a lesbian scene…Mount Holyoke doesn’t have that as much), Amherst (2nd best liberal arts school in the country), and Hampshire (which you could get into–it is very, very artsy.) I go to one of these schools, and I LOVE it, and you meet tons of people from other schools.

Anyway. Other schools in MA you could try include Boston U, Northeastern (probably a bit of a safety), and Babson.

In CT, you could look at Fairfield University and Connecticut College.

Florida doesn’t have that many great schools–and if you want a job in an Eastern city (Boston, New York), then the name of a school in Florida isn’t as ‘good’ as the name of a school in, say, Boston. But yeah, if you want a FL school, U Miami and UF are the best, I suppose.

Good luck!

If your talking U Phoenix, no These are basically trade schools that offer eqivalent to the Major field of studies but don’t offer the Core Education. For example, the typical Computer Science course in college requires: Caculus 1 and 2 Electronics 1 Physics 1 2 years history 2 years English Most if not all of these courses are NOT part a U Phoenix Computer program, although they do offer some History courses, but that’s in the Educational major. U Phoenix offers no serious math or science courses. Those credits are required for a degree at all colleges. What U Phoneix does is create their own MAJOR names often with embelishments Business Accounting Business Marketing Then they seek accreditation from Trade School bodies. This is NOT to say the education is bad, but if you get a BA in Business Marketing don’t expect the UCLA graduate school of business to accept this for their MBA program. Furthermore there is no true admissions process, no requirement of transcipts, no high school pre-requsits. Now, some brick trade schools are taking a novel approach. MIT (Musicians Insitute of Technology) in Hollywood. They started off as GIT (Guitar) and were basically not even a trade school. They were an un-regulated tutoring institute, much like Learning Tree. Today, however, MIT has banded together with LACC a 2 year community college to make an accredited BA program in music. LACC provides the 1 year math, 1 year science, 2 years history, 2 years English requirements for lower division studies MIT provides the upper division major field studies. So you get about 40-60 credits from LACC and another 60-80 credits from MIT’s advanced music program, which is accredited now. This means the MIT is now employing department heads and instructiors with Masters Degrees or almost with the Masters degree from a brick college, plus instructors with professional experinece. You still, however, may not be able to get into a UCLA music Masters program wtih this combination.

UMass is a great school. So is Amherst. You should also consider Smith and Mt. Holyoke. You can take classes at UMass and Amherst for free from either school, and still attend one of the best schools in the country.

Brown is a reach but you have a good shot at the other schools you mentioned.