Am I being realistic or am I being too hard on myself?

Chance Me / Match Me
1

I’m a senior and as I finalize my college list, I’m trying to have a good mix of colleges. I’m currently thinking of my target schools being colleges like Boston University, Tulane, Northeastern… and my reaches are schools like UC Berkeley, UCLA.

GPA: 3.64 (UW), 3.72 (W) this may go up a bit after sem 1 senior year
ACT: 33 composite
SAT IIs: taking Bio and Math 2 in October

Class Rigor: highest
IB diploma student!
Junior & Senior year classes: Higher Level Chem, Higher Level Bio, Higher Level English, Standard Level Math, Standard Level French, Standard Level History

ECs:
-School swim team in 9th grade, Junior Varsity in 10th grade, Varsity in 11th and 12th grade (hopefully will be Varsity swim captain this year)
-Over 300 hours of service
-Main leader of a service club where we teach underprivileged children English and other activities (I live in India; I’m a US citizen though)
-Helped raise money to rebuild a school in another state that was flooded
-Created educational videos to help an education NGO

-Taught children (paid) swimming once a week for 1 semester every year
-School newspaper (9th and 10th grade), school yearbook (11th and 12th grade)

Recommendations & Essays: should be very good I think

Ethnicity: Asian (Indian)
Gender: Female

Do you think I’m being realistic with the schools I’m applying to or do you think I can apply to even more selective schools such as Johns Hopkins, Brown…? Also what do you think are my chances for UC Berkeley and UCLA? Any other school suggestions are also welcome.

2

You seem to be very strong in every aspect except perhaps grades, so I would apply to schools that have a more holistic approach rather than mostly test scores and grades. Ivy leagues and other top-tier schools often pride themselves on being holistic and counting the essay, ECs, and class rigor higher than other colleges. So I think that aiming higher would be a good bet!

BTW I am also applying to Brown as one of my tops this year!

3

UCB and UCLA (as well as other UCs) pay more attention to GPA than anything else. So you not going to have much luck with the top UCs. If you are interested in other UCs, then you will have much better chance (High/Mach) with mid level UCs such as UCI, UCSB or UCD.

4

To avoid confusion in my above post, I meant “Match” and not “Mach”!