Let me give you my perspective. This year my D went through the selective college admissions process. LIke you, she had a perfect 36 ACT score and strong grades. She tried the shotgun approach and applied to Brown, Yale, Harvard, Princeton along with some other reach schools. In total she applied to about 10 reach colleges. She got into all her safety and target colleges but none of her reach colleges. Now maybe there was some glaring defect in her application that made her a less than competitive applicant to Ivy League colleges. There is no shortage of wealthier white females applying to these schools. My suspicion though is that these colleges can sniff out an applicant who is applying to a ton of reach colleges. Maybe it’s possible to attend every college admissions visit to your area for 10 coleges and engage 10 admissions officers in an ongoing dialog and write 10 perfect “why Yale, Brown, Harvard and so on” essays. I feel that as an applicant you would be much better served by applying to no more than 3 or 4 reach colleges and really taking the time to draft a compelling application tailored to each school. I also feel, as has been expressed on college confidential in the last few days, that these colleges are really looking for that something extra. By all means apply to some of these schools. You have very strong academic credentials. What you don’t have, or at least have not communicated, is anything that sets you apart from all of the other brilliant students applying to these schools