Chance me Junior for Ivy leagues 1550 SAT 3.97 GPA Middle class Asian with no hooks [IL resident, NMSF, biology of biochemistry major]

Three things immediately come to mind reading your post.

First of all, you are doing very well. You are a very strong student who has accomplished a great deal. Your stats are superb.

Secondly, in terms of EC’s, I think that you once again have already done quite a bit. I would recommend that for the rest of high school do not worry about what university admissions wants you to do. Instead, think about what is right for you and what would be helpful to the club or activity. Then whatever is right for you, do it and do it well. Meanwhile, you can read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. The recommended approach of “do what is right for you and do it well” is what my wife and my daughters and I have all done, but what each of us did was four very different sets of things, and led to different universities for each of us.

I am wondering what you are planning to do with a degree in biology or biochem. I did notice:

Which makes me think of “premed”. However, I also have a daughter who is working for a biotech company, which is of course another option with a degree in biology or biochem.

There are a LOT of universities that are excellent for premed, and that are very good for biology or biochemistry. UIUC is one of them. I just noticed that biochemistry is in the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at UIUC. Cellular biology is what my younger daughter majored in.

These are also potential majors for which some form of graduate school is likely even if you decide not to pursue medical school.

If either medical school or a master’s degree is likely in the future, then you might want to avoid debt for your bachelor’s degree. Saving some money for medical/graduate school would be even better. To me this suggests that an in-state public school is also very much worth considering, particularly when the in-state public university is UIUC. It is not obvious to me whether the other schools that you have mentioned are any better for what you want to do, even if the other schools are also excellent.

Also, whether you are premed or not, you are going to be in classes that overlap with premed classes. These will be very academically demanding classes. Your excellent results from high school suggest that you will be very much ready to take these challenging classes, but keep in mind that they will be a lot of work at any of the schools that you have mentioned. You are very likely to see premed classes full of very strong students, with at lest some tough midterm exams with a class average in the 40’s or 50’s (and many or most of the students in the class will have never had a 50 in their life – some will have never had a B in their life). There will be a few students who can pull off 80’s or 90’s on these exams.

You are obviously competitive for admissions to any university in the US, and any university in the world in which you speak the language of instruction. However, the schools that you have listed are very competitive for admissions, admissions to top ranked universities in the US is not just based on merit, and being Asian will not help your chances. Similarly being out of state for public universities will not help your chances. Some spots will go to athletes and legacy students at each of these schools. I do not think that your chances at these other schools (other than UIUC) are much different from the overall admissions rate. For most of your out of state public schools I also wonder whether they are worth the additional cost and travel time compared to UIUC. You most likely will for example be traveling around Christmas and/or New Year, when snow can mess up travel plans.

I also agree with a comment above that you should make sure that you are happy with your safeties and matches rather than reaches. The reaches are often easier to pick out since they are all famous schools. On the other hand, if UIUC is really a safety (your guidance counselor would know this better than I) then you might have this covered already. When I was coming out of high school I had McGill as a safety (in-province), which put me in a similar situation where with a safety this good you might not need anything else other than reaches (and might not even need reaches).

And make sure to think about which schools are a good fit for you.

I think that you are likely to do very well wherever you end up.