Am I a good applicant for top tier schools?

“Pre Med”

I am not a big fan of strong premed students attending the most academically challenging university that they can get into.

If you are premed, then I assume that you want medical school to be a realistic possibility. To me this means that you want a university that will prepare you for the MCAT (approximately top 200 or 250), where you can get a very high GPA (you will be in the top 1/2 and preferably top 1/4 of the incoming students based on stats), and that are affordable (in-state or very good merit aid). Then you need to get there and work very hard based on the fact that premed classes are tough and other premed students will be very strong.

Nearly every student at MIT and Harvard and Stanford were top 1 or 2 in their class. Many of the international students were top 1 or 2 in their country (I met a few at international student events). Most of them expect to be in the top 1/2 of their class at university. Half of them are wrong.

To answer your question: So far I think that you are competitive for a top 25 university, but that they would be reaches. A year from now we will have more information to base our guesses on.

For ECs, I am a big fan of doing what you want to do, and doing it very well. This approach did get me into “top 3” schools twice (once for undergrad, once for a master’s).