If you get in the honors program, it will be a good option. That is what my kids did, rolling admissions in our flagship honors program. They got in before Dec 31, so then they just applied to reaches. So a good strategy is to have a broad list to start with (safeties, matches and reaches) but with some good matches that have EA or rolling admissions. If the early matches pan out, then you can go to a heavy reach list. You could even do UIUC EA and Yale SCEA (Yale SCEA policy allows early application to publics). If the EA schools do not pan out, then you fall back to your original diverse list.
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