<p>If your high school doesn’t routinely send 20 students a year to Ivies+MIT+Stanford (+ maybe a few other extremely selective institutions), then I think a class rank in the 20’s is still going to be an uphill climb.</p>
<p>But the real problem right now is that you’re a sophomore. The data you’ve given us now won’t get you into Harvard or its peers. I am sure of that. I don’t want to get sucked into playing “What if?” There are too many unhatched chickens to count.</p>
<p>Here’s what I feel comfortable saying: if you want to go to a very selective college or university, then you should do everything you can to polish your academic record. Take demanding classes and get A’s in them. Work to impress your teachers, so that they’ll write you glowing letters of recommendation. Improve your ACT score, or focus on SAT instead. Will that get you into Harvard, Stanford, Swarthmore or MIT? Nobody can promise that. It will, however, help you gain admission to someplace where you can have a rewarding, life-changing intellectual experience in college. That might be a selective, famous university; it might be the honors program of a good university without a name that makes the hair on people’s arms stand on end. It’s just too soon to know.</p>