Chance/Match Me: Junior at competitive public HS with good academics (3.98 UW, 1570 SAT, 1520 PSAT) but mediocre ECs aiming for Ivies and T25 [physics or engineering]

Unless your counselor provides a rank you don’t have one.

What does - founded a club that’s top nationally mean ?

Your ECs seem more than fine and are unique such as writing for a chess magazine.

Your stats are fine.

Two things:

  1. Can you get into a top school - yes. But can and will are two different things - no one can ensure admittance at schools that take 8% or less.

  2. Ivy is an athletic league. The schools differ. Cornell is large, Dartmouth is rural, Columbia and Penn (and more) urban.

Find the type of school you’d like. You will be there four years, day after day.

And have that budget talk now with your folks. You are talking $400k or close to - no idea of your major or goals but will it be worth it to them if you can go for 25% of the cost ? These are discussions to have.

Starting looking at schools - urban, rural, small, large. Find the right schools for you, not US News, the WAJ, Payscale, Money, Forbes or whatever ranking you are using - which will give you a lot more than 25 top 25 schools. And if you have a desired major, many tops in a major aren’t tops overall. For example, U of Arizona is a physics powerhouse. And cake admit. Not all the Ivies are necessarily tops in engineering.

My point - find the best home, one where you fit and won’t strangle your family financially, not one others (3rd parties) say is the best. If it’s an Ivy - the fantastic. But if not that’s fantastic too.

Good luck.

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