Yes. I mean, it’s your journey; these are your choices to make, but it is rather more of an art than an exact science. Think of your application as an Alexander Calder mobile; in order for it to hang properly, you have to have the different pieces arranged in a certain balance. Right now, yours is hanging by a thread. You probably didn’t expect that this would come up during an ordinary “Match Me” thread but, when, tangentially, you say you don’t have any ECs, alarms do go off. You have to look at it from the point of view of a middle-aged adult who has read about a hundred essays from high-achieving students on all sorts of precious subjects; the one subject they know the least about is you. And a part-time job opens up all sorts of opportunities to address something they would be intensely interested in knowing about you. They already know you’re smart; basically, they want to know how mature you are.
I’m not trying to be argumentative, but I’m not sure how much I agree with this. Tens of thousands of kids have a part time job AND an activity like sports, band, dance or theater (sometimes even multiple of those) AND summer programs AND stellar grades and test scores. I think an exception could be made for low income students but OP is not low income.
On top of that, OP wants a “reachy” school. “Reachy” schools tend to put a lot of emphasis on ECs.
this seems unlikely.
Do you have no hobbies? Do you help family in a meaningful way (watch younger sibling, bring grandparents to doctor, mow lawn each week)? Play in an online chess tournaments? Moderate a discord group of people with same interests? Read extra books for fun?
Edit: somehow I missed above.
Also with weak ECs make sure your essays lean into things like character and resilience and/or how you engage in the intellectual world (inside and outside of class).
geeky/reachy schools like scholars, people deeply thinking about complex and interconnected topics, etc. You can display this in other ways than beyond a club.
I didn’t make any statement or judgment about the relative strength of the ECs. OP didn’t initially think they had an ECs, I was merely confirming they do have ECs.
This student is looking for reachy colleges. Ohio University is an excellent school for certain things…but I would not call it reachy school…even with the honors tutorial college.
And I’m a proud alum with a lot of family ties to the university.
I noted the overall university selectivity upfront but I’ll disagree on the Honors Tutorial College, it’s selective as are other interview type programs. See below. They accept less than 100 Given what the OP wants and what some of their writing conveys, other than the lack of urbanness, this seems, based on what I can tell, to fit their personality better than even a UW will - given the small group or one:one opportunities.
And I’ll add OP liked the first mention. Op can decide for themselves if worth investigating and others are free to add any programs they’d like. .
See below for ‘selectivity’.
“The College is highly selective, typically enrolling fewer than 100 students each year across all of its programs of study. Applicants who do not receive an invitation to interview for an HTC program automatically will be reviewed for admission to the appropriate OHIO college. Because of the nature of a tutorial education, an interview with Directors of Studies and faculty tutors is required for admission to HTC.”
I agree. The OP asked for reachy colleges. OU is not reachy
I think the challenge is that reachy colleges like Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame…the Ivies…publics like Cal, UCLA, UVA, UNC, Michigan…small top notch LACs… this caliber of schools expect significant ECs. They expect the whole package and frankly they get it.
I am not knocking the OP, but an after school job is not a significant EC. (IMO it is a disservice to the OP to pretend otherwise.)
Therefore, it might be a good idea for the OP to
consider honors programs at overall less selective colleges; they could provide the sought after intellectual challenge, without the lack of significant ECs being a stumbling block.
OP can easily focus on reachy Canadian or UK colleges that don’t care about ECs.
Sure. Great idea. Didn’t say OP couldn’t.
They certainly won’t have warm weather though.
Agree, and, importantly, most of the reachy schools listed in this thread will not be in budget ($60k) for a family that makes over 200,000 as is the case here, since most of them don’t give merit discounts.
Let’s face it, we’re arguing over Hail Mary passes. Adcom will rightly see through the sudden interest in humanity starting Spring of her junior year. Same is probably true for trying to package herself as a blue-collar heroine because she works after school. One just seems a bit more organic than the other, IMO. Luckily, the OP has one of the planet’s outstanding R1 universities as an in-state possibility even with weak ECs.
Feel free to PM me for further arguing! 
Bumping this from much earlier in the thread—OP, I hope you’ll consider majoring in English if this is your passion.
I have hired many, many people with English degrees (and have one myself, as well as a graduate degree in English, and I’m not an academic); you develop highly marketable skills (research, writing, critical thinking/analysis) that you just have to position correctly as you pursue jobs.
And a double-major with economics would make you even more interesting. 
Good luck!
@KV1, I think it might be helpful for you to elaborate on what kind of college suggestions you’re hoping for. Are you looking for schools with a certain degree of prestige attached to their name? Are you looking for highly rejective schools (i.e. schools that will turn away the vast majority of the strong applicants that are applying)? Are you looking for schools that are going to have an intellectual atmosphere, even if they’re not “reachy” schools?
-
I already knew my safety schools (UW Milwaukee, UW Madison, McGill) when I asked the question, so I was hoping to find the schools that would make up the rest of my list; I assumed that those schools would necessarily be “reachy,” based on my wish for rigor and intellectualism. Prestige is not my priority, though I guess a school with a reputation for intellectualism would probably also happen to be prestigious.
-
Despite being a sure admit for me, I was a thinking that Madison (and perhaps also McGill) is a good, affordable, ‘target-level’ school that I would be pretty happy with—I wouldn’t want to apply to colleges comparable in quality or fit but greater in cost and selectivity. Schools like Minnesota or Marquette or Fordham, which I think are targets, are not what I am looking for.
-
Equally, Occidental or the HTC at Ohio are perhaps more practical suggestions than Swarthmore or UChicago, which are probably too selective for a student like me. Hence “reachy”: plausible but not necessarily probable. But schools that are both probable and good fits are fine, too.
-
People have vaguely recommended schools overseas, but the only one specifically suggested was Oxford. I am unsure as to how likely an admit there would be, but I’m open to other international suggestions.
(The numbering of my points does not correspond to the order of your questions.)
Thank you for your response, @KV1.
Are you open to single-sex schools? If so, what gender do you identify as?
Also, I’m not entirely sure that schools like Swarthmore or UChicago are out of reach for you. They are certainly low probability schools and you (and pretty much anyone) should go in anticipating that they are going to likely be denials/waitlists, but with well-crafted responses on your essays and in engagements with them, I don’t think they are impossibilities.
But note that OP may well receive significant need-based aid at many of the reachiest schools. For example, Colby’s new Fair Shot Fund caps family contribution at $20k/yr for families with incomes up to $200k, and a variety of highly selective schools have similarly increased aid in the last year or so for middle-class families (“middle-class” by standards of expensive private colleges, at least). Our experience at a highly selective school with family income in the $150-$200k range is that the need-based aid brings the cost down far below OP’s budget of $60k.
Below are some schools that you may want to consider. I have sorted them by my guesses as to your chances for admission. I excluded colleges with overall admit rates below 10% since you seem to think they are impossibilities, but if there was one or two that you thought was an extremely great fit for you, I do not think it would be a waste of an application.
There are some single-sex schools on the list but they are easily eliminated. One of the good things about single-sex schools is that their admit rates are higher than they would be if they were coed, as half of strong applicants are eliminated due to their sex. And both Bryn Mawr and Wellesley have opportunities for students to take classes in coed settings.
I can’t assure you that all of these schools have as extensive of intellectual discussions and rigor as you desire, but I think they stand a good chance of having them.
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
-
Lewis & Clark: 5% Asian
-
U. of Puget Sound: 6% Asian
Likely (60-79%)
- St. John’s: 2% Asian (NM) and 4% Asian (MD)
Toss-Up (40-59%)
-
Brandeis: 17% Asian
-
Occidental: 14% Asian
-
Trinity C.: 4% Asian
-
Trinity U.: 8% Asian
-
U. of Rochester: 17% Asian
Lower Probability (20-39%)
-
Bryn Mawr: 11% Asian
-
Case Western: 27% Asian
-
College of the Holy Cross: 3% Asian
-
Macalester: 8% Asian
-
Reed: 8% Asian
Low Probability (less than 20%)
-
Emory: 25% Asian
-
Haverford: 12% Asian
-
Wellesley: 23% Asian
With respect to international schools, I’ve heard positive things about St. Andrews, and @NiceUnparticularMan visited there last year with his S24, I believe.
Oxford is very reachy, but still likely to be more probable than say U Chicago.
There are lots of universities in the UK, the most popular with Americans, beyond Oxford and Cambridge, are London (Imperial, LSE, UCL, KCL) and Scottish universities, including St Andrews and Edinburgh. These are generally the most selective. Regional UK universities (Durham, Bristol, Exeter, Warwick, Manchester, etc) are a possibility as well. As are Irish universities (University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin).
The most important consideration is that you have to decide on a course (major) and that’s what you study with essentially no general education (a very small amount in Scotland, none in England). You should look at course descriptions carefully to see if any of them appeal.
Start with https://www.ucas.com/applying/applying-university and then look at individual universities and specific courses