Congratulations on building a strong profile in high school!
Below are my guesses as to what your chances might be at these schools:
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
- IU
- Ohio State
- UT – Dallas
Likely (60-79%)
- SMU
Toss-Up (40-59%)
- Texas A&M (honestly unsure)
Lower Probability (20-39%)
- Georgia
Low Probability (less than 20%)
- Cornell
- UPenn
- Harvard
- Columbia
- Georgetown
- Michigan
- UT Austin
- Notre Dame
- USC
- Emory
- U. of Florida
If Columbia came back as $55k, then you can probably eliminate the first five schools I listed in the low probability category (though you could check out Harvard’s NPC, as it is likely to be more generous than Columbia). Those schools don’t offer merit aid (and Michigan is highly unlikely to provide sufficient merit aid either). UT and U. of Florida would be your best chances at getting an affordable school in the low probability bucket, but the privates on the latter half of the list do offer merit aid, so it’s not impossible that they’d reach your budget price.
I’m not an IB specialist, but I’d potentially consider Fairfield (CT), Providence (RI), Trinity U (TX), and Texas Christian as possibilities where there’s the odds of admission are greater and where there may be a bit more of a path to IB than at some other schools (though I will yield to @Catcherinthetoast’s far superior knowledge on the subject). Also, you might want to check out U. of Houston as well.