It’s easy to pick dream schools. It’s more difficult to find target and safety schools. If you like Chicago why not U Chicago? If you want smaller maybe Carleton or Macalester? After your in-state options UMN-TC or Wisconsin seem like good safeties. Maybe Florida or Georgia if you want warmer weather and sports.
Agree with others…if you are at a prep school, there should be excellent college counseling. Use it. But also do your own research. The college counselors at your school will be able to advise you on places where students similar to you from your school have been accepted…and that is sometimes a help.
I don’t usually post on these types of threads, but I agree with others. Despite your excellent stats, you have a very top heavy list of schools. BC is not a safety. Who told you that it was?
Look at the acceptance rates for some of these schools…and particularly those “Dream schools”. The acceptance rates at some of those places are in the single digits…and others 10% or so. Let’s translate that…90% to 95% of applicants get rejected…and in that pool of rejected students are many many well qualified applicants like you. Simply put…these colleges don’t have enough seats to accept all of the well qualified applicants.
I would very very strongly urge you to drop the “Dream school” thing and focus on what you want in a college.
Who helped you create that original list? It looks like someone took the USNew rankings and ticked off a bunch at the top of the list. That is not the only thing that matters in college selections.
So…my free advice…build your actual application list from the bottom up. Pick more than one safety…a places you like, would be happy to attend, and are affordable (make sure they are really affordable. $70,000 a year plus is a lot of money). You want more than one sure thing just in case none of the others work out. It’s nice to have a choice to make come matriculation decision time.
Then build your list UP. Next do real match schools. Not ones where you think you are a match but ones where you are solidly in the top 10-20% of accepted student stats.
Look at the common data sets for each school.
THEN add your reach schools.