So how should I narrow down my list even further, given that I don’t care about other stuff, such as campus size or location?
You must care about some other stuff. Do you want to be involved in research? (This will be very helpful if you want to go on to graduate school / become a scientist, but still helpful even if you don’t.) Then you might want to rank schools based on how much of a commitment they provide to undergraduate involvement in research.
The college’s acceptance rate doesn’t mean all that much because different people apply to different colleges. Much more interesting will be the average SAT scores of admitted students. Basically, the rationale behind applying to 6-9 colleges is that you apply to 1-2 stretch schools, where your application is worse than the average accepted student’s (but you still might get accepted, since someone has to be below average!), 3-5 schools where you’re an average to above average student, and then 1-2 safety schools where you expect to be a top student (and thus be guaranteed to get in).
That rationale won’t fit for you if you need the full ride to go (and are looking for a merit-based scholarship rather than a need-based scholarship); then you’ll essentially only be applying to safety schools, with the schools where you expect to be an average student are the stretch schools (since most schools don’t give full rides to average students, but they might).
You must care about some other stuff. Do you want to be involved in research? (This will be very helpful if you want to go on to graduate school / become a scientist, but still helpful even if you don’t.) Then you might want to rank schools based on how much of a commitment they provide to undergraduate involvement in research.
The college’s acceptance rate doesn’t mean all that much because different people apply to different colleges. Much more interesting will be the average SAT scores of admitted students. Basically, the rationale behind applying to 6-9 colleges is that you apply to 1-2 stretch schools, where your application is worse than the average accepted student’s (but you still might get accepted, since someone has to be below average!), 3-5 schools where you’re an average to above average student, and then 1-2 safety schools where you expect to be a top student (and thus be guaranteed to get in).
That rationale won’t fit for you if you need the full ride to go (and are looking for a merit-based scholarship rather than a need-based scholarship); then you’ll essentially only be applying to safety schools, with the schools where you expect to be an average student are the stretch schools (since most schools don’t give full rides to average students, but they might).
You might find this comment thread interesting.