Firstly, thank you all for your feedback. To give you a better idea of what I have going on: I will be getting my B.A. in Linguistics. That degree by itself doesn’t really say anything about anything, so specializing is pretty much a necessity. I want to do Computational Linguistics &/or Language Acquisition (software programs), but essentially it all is a form of A.I.
I have googled top LING schools a million times over the last couple years and have seen plentyyyyyyyyyyyyy of prestigious schools rule the rankings list. MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Berk, Oxford, NYU, and more. I wouldn’t apply to a random high caliber school that didn’t have a great ling department or specialization of my field.
But, it was always a dream of mine to go to Oxford, but I didn’t know how to prepare myself for it in high school & let that dream drift away. I don’t need to leave the U.S., but want to prepare myself to apply to the highest programs I can, knowing that at the very least, I will always land a great option, but I don’t know any strategies because nobody in my family understands the college process in general.