<p>Allen, most of the kids the country are in your situation. In fact with your awareness you are ahead of the game. With the 2000+ colleges in the US, only a few of the are for the "elite" candidate. The reason these kids take up most of the discussion, is because of the bottleneck up there. These kids have generally been successful at nearly everything up until this point and now they are facing success rates of under 30% for the top schools. That is what causes the frenzy. Most kids I know who have your gpa or below, your test schores and below, tend to go to local colleges, and are often auto accepts at such schools so the college admissions process is not a big deal.</p>
<p>I do feel strongly, however, that there is a dearth of info on schools that could cater to this crowd that are not such local schools. I like seeing threads addressing this issue. A hole in the college guides are narrative accounts of the many schools that are not considered top 300 or so.</p>