Are you Catholic? Not being Catholic will certainly lower your chances. I think you have a good shot, but your input on your essays would be the only concern. Common App essay about an upward trend in grades? Given that your a graduate of Northside College Prep, I think Notre Dame would have liked to have seen a more challenging topic than that. You also said your why ND was generic. That isn’t good. Something along the lines of helping to fulfill the Jesuit mission of social justice would have been more of an eye opener for them. What’s broken, I’m not sure what you wrote, but again, if the majority of your essays don’t move them enough, and you aren’t Catholic, you have a good shot. Your goal in REA was to overwhelm them.