Chance Me for Poli Sci/Econ T20s! [TX resident, 4.0 GPA, top 4% rank, 1510 SAT]

So with your kind of profile, I think it is fine to apply anywhere really, as you appear to have the sorts of academic qualifications that make you qualified anywhere.

However, there is also a good chance you will not be admitted to any colleges with a very low acceptance rate, aka Reaches for Everyone. There are just way too many highly qualified students applying to those colleges for all those applicants to get a slot.

Given that, I would suggest a couple things. First, you really don’t need to apply to so many Reaches for Everyone. Currently you have a mix of large publics, midsized privates, and smaller Liberal Arts and Sciences colleges. I would put some serious work in to trying to figure out which of those experiences you really want for four years. I would also spend some time looking into things like setting (city, suburb, college town, rural), you could look at the details of their Poli Sci and Econ programs, you could look into student reviews and possibly visit, and so on. In the end, you really don’t need more than like 3-5 of these, or at most a couple more if you remain undecided between a couple types of college.

OK, then the next question is what should your Likelies and Targets be, because there is a good chance you will end up at one of those. So far you have named one Likely (actually an auto admit), Texas. But is that what you actually want? Like you have listed a lot of LACs, and there are LACs that would be likely to admit you. So why not consider some of those? You could also consider things like Honors programs, auto-merit, competitive merit, and so on.

Then same deal with Targets. Usually it makes sense to have at least 3-5 Targets, again maybe a couple more if you are unsure what type of college you want. For you, I would say any college with a 25-50% acceptance rate (for OOS if relevant) would count as a plausible Target (if 50%+, that would be a Likely, and if under 25%, that is a Reach).

Unless I am missing something, right now you have no Targets. Again, you should be very deliberate about your Targets, considering exactly what you want in a college experience.

As a final thought–some people choose a Likely or Target in the end, even if they get into one or more of their Reaches. That may be because of something like Honors or Merit. But they may also just really come to love one of their Likelies or Targets. So I would make sure you remain open to that possibility, and again it all starts with very carefully choosing your Likelies and Targets.

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