Hi - thanks. A bit more info which might give you a better picture of me. I am a permanent resident with a European passport - I lived in Europe half my life. I am from a v large well known public school in a big city. I have strong ECs in theatre , music (some operatic training) and journalism, so these would be very important to me on any campus. I don’t have hooks, apart from being LGBTQ male, which is not at all unusual. I am not obsessed by school status, (though it does look like it from my post!), but I would like a rigorous academic environment and a well-resourced department, particularly for involvement in archaeology and other ways of examining the classics beyond the literature. Any course that allows joint majors or an open curriculum is very appealing.
For the first two years of high school I was really unstrategic about grades, so I took far too many to get in extra arts courses that I enjoyed, my school is heavily stem oriented, and notorious for being one of the toughest schools in the country, so even though I am a B+ math student, I still got a decent ACT score (32 in math). I am heavily involved in theater and music - I have been in productions every semester of high school - which has a significant rehearsal schedule attached to it. It probably cost me a point or two on my GPA, but I wouldn’t trade.
For my safeties right now, I have McGill, Reed, Oberlin, maybe USC which I loved despite everyone telling me I would hate it (though that is more a match). I know, they are a bit all over the map both metaphorically and literally.
Match, or high match schools, I really like both UCLA and Tufts, and think I would be happy at either. But to be honest a lot of my list choices are because either I have friends at these schools who really like them, or because I liked the vibe on campus visits or enjoyed talking to their reps who I met at college fairs.