Congratulations on all of your accomplishments in high school! You definitely should not denigrate your involvement in literary fields and community service; those are wonderful activities!
I believe that you are a strong applicant and have a definite shot at any school on your list. As others have mentioned, however, your reach schools have far too many strong applicants apply than they can accept. Thus, regardless of your own merits as a candidate (and you have many!), the odds are not in your favor.
I have to agree with this. A safety should meet three criteria:
- You are extremely likely to be accepted
- It is extremely likely to be affordable for your family
- You would be happy to enroll and attend for four years
U. of Washington is not a safety for admissions, and it definitely won’t come within a $15k budget. Nor will U. of Michigan. If your family qualifies for need-based aid and you want to consider other top-notch publics, UNC-Chapel Hill and U. of Virginia are the only two publics in the country I’m aware of that provide need-based aid to out-of-state students.
For all schools, though, you need to run the Net Price Calculator. If a school does not offer merit aid, and the Net Price Calculator comes out more than $5k over budget, eliminate it. Virtually none of your reaches offer merit, which is why it’s especially crucial to look at this.
Then, look at your schools where the Net Price Calculator spits out a price that’s too high but ALSO offers merit aid. Find out
- Do they stack merit aid on top of need-based aid, or do they just swap out a scholarship for a need-based grant, or…?
- What is their max merit aid award? If it’s less than full tuition, and the school doesn’t stack merit aid with need-based aid, then eliminate it, because it won’t come within budget.
Essentially, you will probably need to look for schools that are extremely financially generous (Yale, Princeton), have merit aid awards of tuition or more, or will stack merit & need-based aid to provide an award of tuition or more.
Even with that, you need to take a careful look at the costs for room & board, both on-campus and off-campus. You’ll need to be on-campus your freshman year, but then after that you may have to (or want to) move off-campus. Some places it’s more expensive than on-campus, others it’s less, and others about the same. Those are all considerations for someone on a tight budget. As an example, some schools have room & board costs of about $11k, which would be affordable. Others are about $18k, which would not be.
Have you considered The U. of the South in Sewanee? It has a very well-reputed creative writing program and it offers large scholarships.
If you let us know more about whether your family qualifies for need-based aid and which schools clear the cost filters mentioned above, that’d be great.