My whole life I’ve been set on going to a well known or distinguished college like Stanford. I’ve already had the reality check that Stanford is extremely hard to get into - even the guy who got into Yale and Harvard from my school got rejected by Stanford.
I have my eyes set for colleges like UCLA or University of Southern California. I’m so fixated with the idea of going into those colleges that I can’t even open myself up to other great colleges.
I currently have a 3.9 unweighted GPA, 4.0 GPA weighted, already took 2 APs (and three more next year), in sports and clubs, currently done a summer program. I have an ACT of 26 and haven’t gotten my SAT results back yet (and planning to retake either or both tests). I’m within the top 10% of my class (as far as my high school is willing to tell since they do not do class ranking).
I understand that I have an extremely slim chance of getting into Ivy League universities or universities of Ivy League level.
Do I remotely have a chance in getting accepted into very competitive schools like UCLA, and if not what are the chances of me getting into those schools? Does the type of college (as in how distinguished or well known it is) matter in picking a college? (What I mean by that is if I wanted to study medicine or computer science, would it matter going to a distinguished college?).
Please tell it to me straight (but not rudely). I need the reality check about my future and what colleges to be searching for.
Here is the Freshman profile for UCLA. Chance your self and see how you compare to the average admit.
http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/adm_fr/Frosh_Prof14.htm
ACT is not competitive for UCLA or USC but your GPA is on target. Hopefully your SAT will be higher. Are you a rising Junior or Senior? How many AP classes do the top students take at your HS? How rigorous of a class schedule do you have in comparison to your fellow classmate?. Prestige will only get you so far. You need to pick schools where you have the best chance of an acceptance, that has your intended major and where you can excel academically and socially. The Happiness factor is important since you will not succeed at any school where you do not feel it is the best “fit”. There is no harm in applying to Stanford, just be realistic in your college list. Have 1-2 safeties, 3-4 matches and 2-3 reaches. Depending upon your SAT score, you should look at some of the other UC’s such as UCSD/UCSB/UCI/UCD, privates such as LMU, Pepperdine, Occidental, Pitzer and even some Cal States such as SDSU/Cal Poly SLO. There are so many choices and where you go for Undergrad will not define you. You can always apply to the more prestigious schools for Grad school in the future. Spend some time researching all the other possibilities.
Edit:
I accidentally wrote that I took 2 APs but I have taken three APs (so by next year the total would be 6 APs).
My school is different because since it is a charter school, we don’t have as many APs or electives compared to other schools. We have under the average APs available and only two honor classes provided (one I had to take freshman year and another I couldn’t get into due to schedule conflict). They also regulate how many APs everyone can take, so freshmen have a fixed schedule with no APs, sophomores are recommended to only take one, juniors are recommended to only take two, seniors are recommended to only take three. The top students mainly take a total of 6 APs (average students take 1-4 APs total). Students that exceed expectations (top transfer students from schools with more options and students within the top 10%) take 6+ and are allowed to despite the cap.
If I may ask, why isn’t the ACT more competitive with very selective schools?
You may also want to consider test optional colleges such as Wake Forest, Bates, Wesleyan, Smith (if you are female) etc. Your ACT scores are slightly low for the schools you are listed
If you look at the ACT score ranges of the admitted students at UCLA (from the link that @Gumbymom posted) you will see that your 26 (I assume Composite) is in the lowest 25% of the admitted students and just at the edge of the lowest 25% of enrolled students. Stanford is even more selective so you really need to improve your ACT score or do significantly better in the SAT to give yoursef a decent chance.