This comment is going to be piling on a bit, but I do feel this is important.
It is perfectly fine to want the work you have done in HS to pay off in college. But it is thinking way too small and short term to want that pay off to be some sort of brag you can make to family or friends about where you got admitted.
I am not saying you are necessarily thinking that way, but that is really behind a lot of the mindset you will see on Reddit and other such social media, in certain high schools, parental social circles, and so on. The anticipation is about being able to say, “I [or my kid] got admitted to X, isn’t that impressive?” And to be very blunt, that is petty thinking, and doesn’t really last. Indeed, soon enough you find yourself at X, all your new peers there obviously also got admitted to X, so there is really no one to brag to.
OK, so what does REAL ambition look like?
Well, first it involves not just getting admitted to a good school, but then doing very well there. And I think a lot of kids who have done really well in HS just assume with enough effort they can do it all again in college, but they are not really thinking clearly about what happens when a bunch of kids who mostly all did really well in HS then collect at the same college. They CAN’T all do as well again. And in particular, many kids who were basically used to outworking most of their HS peers will find that impossible to repeat in a very selective college, or not at the same level of success. So to truly play this the smart way, you have to think very carefully about where you will be very well-prepared to succeed, and where has the sorts of programs and curriculum structure that make sense for you, and where has the types of faculty and student cultures that will energize and support you. Real ambition means finding an affordable college that will work for you in that sense, and it won’t necessarily be the one that gives you the most bragging rights at the time of admission. But if you play this right, and it works out as hoped, you will have plenty of opportunities to see how that benefited you long into the future.
And speaking of affordability, real ambition can often mean finding a way to monetize your hard work in HS. Of course some families truly do not need to worry about educational costs. But most families are on a budget. And how to use that budget is not necessarily a simple task. Like, in many professional paths, there will be more education after college. Blowing your whole budget, maybe even borrowing an uncomfortable amount for college, can make it hard to then pay for that further education. And even if you can, too much debt can really limit your options. Like maybe the best first job for your career interests does not pay that much up front. Can you even afford to take that job with all that debt? Indeed, you might have to write off entire majors and careers that could be great for you in the long run, all because you have so much educational debt. So real ambition in this area means taking your hard work in HS and using it to make sure you are not paying too much for college, such that you can keep taking whatever further educational and career steps that actually make the most sense for you in the long run. And again, that may not be the college that gives you the most immediate bragging rights, but so what? In practice, this can be good in-state admissions, or admissions to a private with generous need, or a private with generous merit, or the rare public with good OOS aid, or so on. But you have to know this is possible and then go after it aggressively.
OK, so finding a college with the right academics for you and that you can comfortably afford is already plenty ambitious, but a lot of kids with credentials like yours that think about all this in a mature way end up realizing they can actually be even greedier than that. They can think about the non-academic experience, both in college and possibly in the surrounding community. They can think about location. They can think about whatever else they would prefer.
OK, so if you can take your hard work in HS and turn it into multiple choices of colleges that would actually be really good for you academically, and comfortably affordable (possibly after aid), and also a great experience all around? That’s a huge payoff for your hard work. And much more meaningful than transient bragging rights.
So again to be blunt, this is almost never true. Sure, some of the wealthiest private and public research universities use that wealth to have very good programs in a lot of areas, so you see those universities popping up over and over in “top for X” sort of lists.
But there are at least two other major ways in which other colleges also can stand out in any given area.
One is just to choose to devote extra resources to a specific program. Like, you mentioned Philosophy, and two of the top Philosophy departments in the world are at Rutgers and Pitt. Why? Well, those are generally very good research universities so it is not a huge surprise. But they happen to have really put some effort into developing those programs to those levels. Since you are interested in Policy and Political stuff, not surprisingly a lot of DC-area colleges have chosen to specialize in part in such programs. And so on.
And then the other major thing to understand is if you are looking for an undergraduate program, then the best undergraduate education you can get in that area may not be at a top research university. It might indeed be at a Liberal Arts College, meaning an institution that has little or no graduate programs and is primarily or exclusively undergraduate focused. That is in fact particularly likely to be true in your areas of interest. And again, maybe these are not going to be the top bragging rights schools among your family and peers, but in the long run you will get way more value out of education and faculty connections and so on available to you at such institutions.
OK, that’s a lot to think about, and it can be daunting. There are potentially 100s of colleges that could make sense for you, and you have to narrow it down to a reasonable application list. And once you get into the spirit of this, you realize you can’t just outsource that process to some online magazine, Reddit, your HS peers, or whatever. You actually have to do a lot of work to investigate, and indeed a lot of work to really understand what is actually important to you.
But with the right spirit it can be a very rewarding process. Indeed, don’t be a jerk about it, but at a certain point you can sort of privately reflect on how all the kids still caught in the mindset of trying to impress each other with where they get admitted are mostly incredibly anxious, whereas you with your real, substantial, long-term ambitions are beginning to realize that as long as you come up with a sensible list, you basically can’t lose. Instead, you will most likely end up with multiple great options, and it will be you telling most of these great colleges that would love to have you the bad news you are going somewhere else.
And that is my final thought for you. Realize that in the end, selective colleges want students who will thrive at their college and go on to successful lives as much as students want those colleges. This mindset that the colleges are handing out prizes to the hardest working and most deserving students is just wrong, because it is not even what the colleges themselves think they are doing. They are trying to put together enrolled classes that will satisfy their many different and sometimes conflicting interests, and you are trying to find a college that will do the same for you, and when it works out well no one is winning a prize, instead a good match, really a good partnership, has been formed.
So in my view, that’s your worthy goal, to get a bunch of partnership offers which really make sense for you. And I know you can do it.