Chance me for Caltech, MIT, Ivies, and UCs!

Most of the universities on your list are reaches for everyone. That being said, you are a very strong applicant. Unfortunately for the top schools (MIT, Harvard, Stanford, …) the majority of applicants are also very strong and the acceptance rates are low. This makes them reaches, even if reasonable reaches in your case.

Do you know whether you would be recruited for water polo? This is a sport which might not be all that common in high schools (at least not where I live). I still remember decades ago watching the men’s water polo team practicing at Stanford. At the time the goalie for the Stanford team was also the goalie for the US Olympic team. We watched him practice and he was absolutely amazing (on the “how is that even physically possible” level). I just checked and as expected they do also have a woman’s team. Unlike some of the other schools on your list, Stanford does have some athletic scholarships (as do the UC’s).

I am a bit concerned about “low income but high assets”. We were in a similar situation. Very often low income / high asset families got that way through being very frugal, which is not always compatible with feeling comfortable spending more than $300,000 for a bachelor’s degree. In your situation (and ours) if your parents do end up spending this much (for each child, if you have siblings) there might be no way for them to ever recover to their current financial situation. This might depend upon how high you mean when you say “high assets”.

You might want to run the NPC on a few schools unless your parents are comfortable being full pay.

Someone I know with slightly lower stats did get accepted to UC Boulder with a merit scholarship. I think that it is pretty safe in terms of admissions if you keep up the good work. It would not surprise me if you get some good acceptances in-state. UC Berkeley would of course be superb for your intended major – very much on the very high “Stanford / MIT” level. I think that your chances are good at UC Berkeley, but I do not think it would be a safety.

You are also from a WICHE/WUE state, which opens up the possibility of getting a price discount on the various WUE schools.

I might also add that IMHO the combination of physics and computer science is potentially a good one. Physics research involves a lot of computers and often a lot of data.

You might want to read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. As I understand it this recommends that in terms of ECs you do what you want to do, and do it very well. To me this looks like exactly what you have already done. Good job!

I think that you are doing very well. I am impressed. Keep up the good work and I think that you will do very well.

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