I found the thread very strange. After 28 posts of which 15 were by the OP, I asked if OP’s S was an URM, because there was no hint to that effect other than one mention of applying to an HBCU. His response was “Son is URM, not 1st Gen. I wasn’t sure that status actually mattered much.” AFAIK he didn’t at any stage say his S was African American. I drafted a response but decided not to post it because I could see the thread was already going off the rails.
I would have found it interesting to read a thread about the OP’s S’s journey (and have the greatest admiration for anyone who can motivate their kid to write 20+ applications and would love to understand more about how they did it), but without critical information to place the story in context, it is going to confuse a lot of people, not just me. Why is this low stats kid applying to such high ranking schools? We know Homerdog’s D is from a wealthy midwestern ORM family, we know KevinfromOC’s D is a Latina “unicorn” (in the words of one poster) from California. That sets their objectives and process in context. Yes, those threads have also got problematic at various times due to a lack of etiquette (mostly over the top criticism for applying/not applying to certain schools) by some posters. But I think this thread was doomed to failure by the OP’s lack of candor about key details.
CC is supposed to help other families learn what worked and what didn’t for those in a similar situation to themselves. If you don’t have sufficient context in a thread to understand the similarities and differences from your own situation, then at best the learnings are limited and at worst you might be misled into taking a sub-optimal approach for your own kids.