First and foremost, Princeton. It is my second and last créme de la créme school, sitting alongside MIT on my "dream" pedestal. Princeton is actually a decent runner-up to MIT in terms of the amount of times it shows up randomly on whatever project I'm currently working on online. For example, it runs the "Annals of Mathematics" journal, which I'm constantly in contact with. Moreover, its emphasis on undergraduate education is something I value a lot, since when/if I get to an american university, I want to get my hands dirty right away. Their biochemistry department literally doesn't know what to do with so many nobel prizes, and its famous mathematics department is very... unique. For instance, they have John Conway - the creator of one of the world's most famous algorithms - sitting on a chair staring at grad students with his usual bored gaze. Yep, first world problems.

  Also, I think it's worth noting that I've been in contact with two Princeton admissions officers. One of them came around here in Rio for a presentation and oh baby, did I rock that follow-up e-mail button. I think it went well, as they even sugested a job for me on-campus. From what I know, Princeton likes good recommendation letters and essays, so I'm putting extra work on those.

 Next, we have University of Texas @ Austin! Rule of thumb: wherever there is oil, there are top-notch chemical engineering courses. I know because here in Rio, we have oil, and UFRJ (the local big-name public university) has one of the best chemistry courses in the country - probably the best, actually. It's the market with all its might at work, and hey, there is oil in Texas. In fact, there is a lot of it. It's not that I particularly like texan culture or even Texas as a whole, but I've been enrolled in a Linear Algebra course from UoT-A and I think it doesn't get much better than this as far as familiarity goes, at least from here.

 Next on the list is Cornell! Cornell's strong point is its history with astronomy. Astronomy/astrophysics is yet another subject I'm invested in, and you just can't beat Cornell here. They went out of their way to produce a powerful and approachable Modern Physics (space stuff) course for edX and they take pride on their achievements on the field. To put things in perspective, at one point in time, both Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson were in the same classroom in Cornell exploring astronomy and hey, that's kinda awesome.

  On that vein, I've also sneaked in FIT (Florida Institute of Tech) into my list. I'll be honest: It's my "safety" choice, but it does have its strong points. You see, it was created during the tech race against the CCCP in the cold war, specifically, the space race. Since Florida is close to the equator, it is easier to send rockets up from there than from other parts of the US. FIT was created as a tech hub who would support this space insfrastructure investment, and it is pretty astronomy-focused to this day. It might not be always on the spotlight, but that doesn't keep me from liking the idea.

  Additionally, I was toying with the idea of UCBerkeley, but I think my list is kind of heavy with top colleges as-is. I definitely don't have a truckload of money around - though I wish I did - and a central idea here is to keep the list concise and effective. It is absolutely not set in stone yet, but at this point I don't see myself giving MIT or Princeton up. Also, I completely open for new ideas, with a couple' reservations: I wouldn't want to study in religiously affiliated or single-sex institutions, since I've been on that setting over the last four years and religion gets pretty crazy in the US. Also, I don't think I'd be able to sleep tight with Duke University or for-profits.