Mid year update. She turned 15 
It is more and more looking like she is going to college right after school, without gap year. She is not considering gap year and we are about 95% percent on board with it. Of course, there is always a curve ball of not getting into any schools or her changing her mind at the last minute:)
She got accepted to governor’s school for this summer, so it will be a great test run for her going away for a long period of time. We are not allowed to visit. I think she is already packing…
ACT came back 36, PSAT most likely will qualify her for at least NMSF. GPA 4.0 (for now, holding our breath she doesn’t decide on flip on us in the last semester).
We have a list of colleges that’s we finalised as far as we can, until August. All have either cyber security degree or comp sci with very strong research and minor in cyber security. Also, will be affordable to us, especially if we can get total payment per year to about $50k max, the lower the better of course:)
GTech reach
Purdue match
UofA Huntsville safety
UofMD College Park reach/match
UIUC reach/match
Northeastern reach
And MIT why not to apply
If anyone can chime in regarding possibility of her getting into these (not MIT, we get it!!! :)) please feel free to comment
Since we are cautiously optimistic about her stats (and with the caveat that admission can be unpredictable) - is it even worth to mess with applications to Cornell or Columbia at all with her stats? She has very decent ECs to show her interest in STEM and Cyber, but not “I cured cancer and won International cyber competition” (I admire kids who did!!)
We applying to all schools EA, Cornell and Columbia will have to be RD. We visited most of the schools except Ivy so she is looking for a larger school with good access to bigger(ish) city and likes all of the once we identified.