“In my previous school, the valedictorian was rejected. Last year, I took it as motivation and told myself that I would be “different”. I would do something that he did not have.”
He might have had / been the complete package, the real deal, and still not get admitted to Stanford. There simply aren’t enough seats at top schools for all who are qualified. Luckily they then overflow into the schools below and those experiences also become excellent.
Is there an online community of people with your particular birth defect that might make you feel less alone? Does your doctor know of other young people in your area with the same condition?
@Pizzagirl Thank you for your concern, but I never said that I was lonely. Yes, my doctor does know some other patients with the same defect that I have.
So I calculated my UW GPA by the end of junior year, and its going to be a 3.86. Is that at least an average range for top schools (CC Top Universities)?
Don’t worry about the dip in your GPA. Your guidance counselor will explain it. You need to make sure you apply to a wide range of schools. Colleges with admission rates that are in the single digits, and even those that are ~20-25%, are reaches for everybody because there are so many qualified applicants. It’s really important to have some (academic and financial) match and safety schools on your list so you have a lot of choices in May. Don’t make the mistake of getting fixated on one or two schools or thinking that you can figure out what another student was missing. Colleges’ needs change and every application year is different. Just do your best. Good luck with your search.
Do not underestimate the importance of a financial match! Research tuition and other fees versus what your family can afford and is willing to pay and see if you can graduate from any of the schools on your list debt-free or with a debt not more than a Toyota Corolla loan. That would be a financial safety.
OP,
You said that you want the answers, not sympathy. " what do I do now?"- I thought that your plan was to apply to colleges. It is not clear to me why do you have a question. I am not providing a sympathy because you stated that you do not need any.
To be fair, @MiamiDAP, providing sympathy isn’t usually in your wheelhouse, either. 
The OP is disappointed, but honestly… it was time that they developed a workable plan that wasn’t just based on a “dream school” anyway. So it is good that they started this thread.
@MiamiDAP I asked that question because, I wanted to know what I should do about my situation, not about whether I apply to colleges or not.
@intparent Thank you! I have started to create a plan about all the colleges I am going to apply to. I just hope everything works out for me!
So on the day of your conception, there were millions of other sperm cells competing for that egg.
Yours was the winner. The rest is gravy!
Seriously, you have to play the cards you are dealt. You can only do the best that you can given the circumstances that you find yourself in. Stop your despair and look forward to a bright future. It doesn’t await you, you have to make it.
Don’t have a dream school, have a dream life. Figure out the person that you want to be and work toward being that person. There are many many colleges that can be a viable stop on that journey. Investigate the possibilities, and come up with a good list and choose the best option when you have a bunch of admits.
I don’t see anything so far that can’t be overcome.
If this were my D, I would encourage all the above and look at financial options and cast a very wide net for college applications. Right now I would tell my D to study, study, study for the SAT or ACT to do their best.
I agree with the others, don’t focus on a single school as the enabler of dreams, as good as Stanford is, as good as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, U of Chicago, Rice, yada yada are, there are a lot of really good schools in this country, and no one is going to make your dreams, you do that. You may just get into Stanford if they see you overcame something that caused your grades to slip, you never know…
Put it this way, the guy who founded the company I work for, which is one of the largest financial firms in the world, went to a state school for an engineering degree and got a masters at a U Cal school…dreams come about because of who a person is and what they are willing to work to, not where they came from, and I’ll tell you a dirty little secret…a lot of those people who work towards getting into those elite schools, spend all their time calculating their GPA, how many EC’s they have, their SAT scores, class rank, they go to one of those schools…and then find out they don’t even know what their dream is:).