@Charliesch LSU is simply a safety, if my son gets into UT then he’d go there over LSU or Alabama. Our family has deep roots with UT as both my wife and are alums and my sons grandfather is also a UT graduate. We think he has a pretty good shot, but nothing’s guaranteed.
We’ve struggled with the idea of whether to apply to the moderately selective schools. Schools like Boston University, Brandeis and Rochester University. My son’s preference has been to go to a public school and with all due respect to those institutions their academic ranking (a subset of US News overall rankings) is actually lower than schools like UT-Austin and Wisconsin- although they tend to have graduation percentage, lower admission rates and student to faculty ratios.