I agree that Caltech does not seem like a good fit. You might, however, consider the Claremont Colleges, which are excellent for premed. You would be competitive for (albeit not assured of) half-tuition merit at Scripps.
Have you considered CWRU and/or URochester?
I guess then I’d question how many years of foreign language classes they have taken. Schools want 3 or 4 years of the same language, correct? Anything less would be considered light on rigor.
For foreign language for the vast majority of universities, completion of a level = number of years. Completion of AP, preferably in a year other than freshman year, and if the HS offers no post-AP courses, will generally meet the recommendation
This is true…and it’s also very challenging to get accepted to medical schools in California…I’ll let @WayOutWestMom explain why. But most CA med school applicants actually attend med school out of state.
This is why I’m suggesting University of New Mexico…IIRC, they do give preference at their medical school to UNM graduates from undergrad. Again, @WayOutWestMom can give the details.
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You are a strong applicant - and likable too. This will show through on your applications. I think you will get into the majority of the following:
The UC’s and Cal Poly
Georgia Tech
Emory
UVA
U-M
UNC - CH
CMU
Cornell
Besides HYPSM and Cal Tech (which I am less optimistic about)- if you ED’d to Wash U, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, or JHU - I believe you would be admitted. Based upon your goals, I would not recommend EDing.
I have some experience with the full-ride scholarships at those schools. The process is grueling, but if you go through your favorite three, you might just pull one. Note it becomes difficult to handle college applications, those applications, and senior year.
Best of luck!
SLO does admit based on mainly on your GPA, HS course rigor, Number of a-g courses taken above the minimums, EC hours/week, if you held a leadership position, if you hekd a major related job, first generation status and local admission area status.
With a projected Biology admit rate of around 9% it is not a safety even though you are a highly qualified and competitive applicant. You definitely have a chance but some of the UC’s such as Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz would fit the Safety definition.
You can look up UC admit rates by Discipline and also by Source school on these links. Both will list the UC Capped weighted GPA to see how you compare.
Best of luck.
IMO the first thing you want to do is consider finances. Your parents have a generous amount put aside for your education BUT not sufficient to be full pay for undergrad and med school. So do you want to spend the $400k on your undergrad education (private college full pay/ many CA public universities) or seek out merit aid/ look at in-state public options and save for med school? The answer to that question should drive your application list.
With your accomplishments, you have as good of a shot at any school on your list as any candidate (absent strongly hooked applicants – athlete, child of donor class or famous person).
The issue though is an optimal application strategy, IMO, you have too many schools on your list. There will be multiples of high stats, high achieving students applying to all the reaches. The ones that get in strike some chord with the AO, usually though the essays and LoR’s. Too many applications usually result in relatively generic essays. Most of these schools are looking at what you will be able to contribute to their community that is important to them. Quality wins hands down over quantity.
I also think you can be proactive with LoR’s. What are your attributes that you want to highlight through actual examples? Teachers that agree to write LoR’s generally want you to succeed. Help point them in the direction you want them to take. Most will appreciate an outline of a “brag sheet” of your strongest attributes and worthy accomplishments.
An REA plus EA (those allowed)/rolling strategy is good. I think though you have too many unless some of the EA apps require little additional work than what is already required in the Common App.
Others have covered a lot of this, but here is my two cents:
$400K is great, but not nearly enough to cover full pay private for undergrad and then med school, and I would never recommend a young person pay the implied difference for their education themselves.
OK, so personally, I would eliminate every private college or OOS public which doesn’t have merit. I know that is a lot of famous colleges, but I just can’t recommend them at what it would end up costing you personally.
Fortunately, you do have a strong merit profile, so if you want to keep on the longshot merit privates, that is fine.
And then you could do just those and your UCs/CSUs.
However, there are privates where you would have a much bigger chance of a lot of merit.
We’ve already mentioned Rochester and Case, which could be considered, although the odds of getting enough merit from them to compete with your likely UC options might be a little slim still. Case might be your better bet, though, IF you demonstrate a lot of sincere interest.
OK, so how about some LACs? Again they can be great premed options, and long story short, they are often better bets to give enough merit to compete with in-state COAs, and sometimes actually beat them.
Washington and Lee and Richmond are two that sometimes give BIG merit. Again the odds are not the best, but you have the profile to realistically try if you would like. I’d suggest the odds of getting BIG merit from one of them is a notch higher than from the WashU/Emory/Vanderbilt sort of colleges, so maybe worth a shot?
Then there are some which give at least enough pretty big awards that they could be well worth considering. Some you could consider would be Kalamazoo, Juniata, Earlham, Allegheny, Rhodes, Trinity (Texas), and St Olaf. This may seem random, but it isn’t–these are all popular possibilities for premeds in my circles, and/or Bio kids, with robust merit programs. All of these in particular also offer Neuro (I note at Kalamazoo and St Olaf, it is an interdisciplinary concentration, as opposed to a major, but that is sort of their thing anyway).
But again, you could just do mostly UCs/CSUs. It can be nice to have choices, though, particularly if some of those choices actually would beat in-state COA.
Thanks so much! The federally funded loans sounds like a great idea. I was wondering if these loans are subsidized or unsubsidized? If the interest rate is ~8% as I found online, this would be around 300,000k once I finish residency, which is doable, I think
Thank you! I agree, do you know of any that could be easier to obtain? E.g. would USC full tuition be easier than those?
Thank you so much! These threads are super helpful. Will definitely be using them to plan out my med school apps! (Once I finish college apps, of course 
)
Does anyone have any input on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness track? Thinking that if I start payment during residency, I could get forgiven..
The federally funded loans you would take for medical school are unsubsidized.
True! Unfortunately my thought process is that these are the schools I’ve been working towards for so long, so I thought I’d just give it a shot. Will definitely place more importance on the UCs though
Oh okay, thank you!
Thanks for the suggestions! I mostly chose these colleges because they were the ones offering full merit aid & that I’d be happy to go to even without the aid (kind of like a 2 in 1 haha)
Oh wow! Thank you for the insightful tips on the merit path.
Would you be willing to share which LAC she was awarded a full-ride at?
And, would really appreciate more insight on the selection process for these merit scholarships. Were there any common personality traits between the awardees?
Thank you! I agree that these are super hard to get. Would be amazing to even be considered!