I'm finally getting around to finalizing my list of schools, and am trying to figure out what some good safetys would be. I'm planning to apply to Stanford, Princeton, CMU, and Cornell as my top choices. Other schools I'm applying to are Harvard, Brown, and BU. (Kind of a weird list I know, but given the opportunity I would love to move to Boston or the surrounding area for personal reasons).
What might be some good safetys to add to this list? Should I play it really safe and apply to schools as little known for CS as Tufts? Or is applying to schools ranked 20-30th safe enough?
Also, how do the schools on my list look for someone interested in going to school with the goals of:
1. Learning a lot of really interesting and cool stuff. Because I love learning CS.
2. Gaining skills that would make me a better software engineer/architect, and learning things about technology that would be useful to know for someone in industry.
3. Making contacts with smart classmates and professors with the goal of finding people I would want to co-found a start-up with, or people who have founded a start-up and need a CTO type person.
Those were listed in no particular order.
Thanks