@collegeboundprogrammer You have a competitive profile for all these schools, but I agree it might be helpful to raise your SAT score a little bit (it is still very good though). Penn ED will also boost your chances quite a bit.
Let me know if you got any questions about Penn.
Also if you are interested in robotics you should check out the GRASP laban Penn. They do amazing things there. https://www.grasp.upenn.edu
@collegeboundprogrammer I think you should be who you are, if you don’t have ECs that show another side, then just starting it junior year won’t work. The Latin is good, but maybe best is to get a 5 in AP English and write some great essays. Your volunteer hours are good, but I’m just thinking you are a very pointed candidate and Princeton seems to like slightly more balance.
Your app and game Dev efforts could be helpful if creative and non-traditional.
Nobody here can chance you for those schools. And if you offer to chance back, why can’t you determine your own chances? Seems an Ivy aspirant can figure that out. But hey, thanks for posting your impressive resume.
@Muad_dib I wanted a third person’s perspective. Someone who has never met me before. Someone who could judge me without any prior knowledge of me, without bias. This is as close as I could get to imitating the conditions of a college application reviewer.
Youre def a strong applicant with good scores and many tech ecs which shows your interest in tech. I think as long as you show admissions officers you have a good personality and are an interesting person, you have a pretty good chance. Also def spend a lot of time on your essays
If you live outside of NoVa your odds at UVa go way up.
@collegemom3717 I do live in NoVa. How much would this hurt my chances? Would I still have a good chance of getting in?
@chocoeater123 @collegemom3717 How many (if any) of the reach schools could I get into? How could I improve my application?
Per an Admissions Dean from UVa: ‘we go first to TJ, the we go to the other schools to fill the rest of our allotment for Northern Virginia’. You don’t give a GPA, but UVa will look at numbers first (not only, but first).
Also, you say that you want to “work at Microsoft or Google” but that is so general as to suggest that perhaps you haven’t thought that through Some of the departments you could work in at Google include Engineering & Tech, Marketing & Communications, Business Strategy, Legal, Design, Sales, Finance.
@collegemom3717 I totally forgot. I have a 4.0 UW and 4.36 W, at the end of junior year. I want to work Microsoft and Google’s Artificial Intelligence divisions, working on speech recognition software. Does that help my chances?
tip: Don’t say you have a blog if you have two articles
Well, yes: a 4.0 UW GPA helps anybody’s chances 
Your more specific interests will help you pull together an essay that has a direction in it: you have a lot of ECs, most of which will blur together in the 5 minutes that an AdComms person will spend reading it. Pulling a thread through them will make their job easier- something you want to do!
Put your ECs together in a hierarchy, with the most important (by level of genuine achievement/selectivity or your level of involvement) clearly distinguished.
Don’t start anything new senior year with the idea that it will impress the adcomms: they will assume that is why you started it and ignore it.
To the extent that you can (and that there is some truth to it), try to show that you will actually be a member of the community, not just holed up in a room with a couple of fellow travelers for 4 years.
Princeton adcomms have indicated that they like to see signs of intellectual maturity and introspective thought (they don’t word it like that, obvs- it’s about what you have learned, how you have applied what you have learned, etc).
MIT has a fabulous admissions blog- my two favorite pieces are:
There are a lot of awesome things named ‘Kaiser’ | MIT Admissionsisnoformula
and
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applyingsideways
I’m assuming that you have done due diligence on affordability. If not, do that now and ruthlessly cut from your list anything that you can’t afford (on that front, you are lucky to have great in-state choices).
@MaizeScream I was hoping to have around 6 or 7 posts by the time I apply.
@collegemom3717 Starting a quiz bowl club was just for fun. I have no intention of putting it on college app.
@MaizeScream @collegemom3717 Do you think that I started these activities too late? My blog, newsletter, company, and app dev club all started this year, because I didn’t discover that I was truly passionate about computer science until the summer of 10th grade, and I didn’t know that these options were available.
@collegemom3717 What did you mean by pulling a thread through my EC’s?
@collegeboundprogrammer Here’s a frame of reference for you from my son.
NMF, 35/1550, 800 Math2/Physics, 5 in CompSci A (10th grade), Calc BC & both Physics C (11th grade)
3 time AIME qualifier, invited to ACSL all-star
Deferred/rejected MIT, rejected Princeton
Going to Oxford for Maths/CompSci
@HazeGrey Wow he has some really great stats! Give him my congratulations for getting into Oxford!
I know my chances are extremely low, and a lot of great applicants don’t get in. I can always hope though, right?
Pulling a thread = making it easy to see how the link up and make sense together as part of your larger story. Taking things that are big/small/obvious/subtle and making it easy for an outsider to have some understanding of who you are. It’s taking the details of what you have done/are doing, recognizing that they are details, and putting them in a larger context.
@collegemom3717 So I would tie in the club I founded, the game studio I created, the blog, the newsletter, and my robotics experience into the idea that I love creating apps and software. My blog and newsletter mark the first time I felt qualified to talk about my experiences in the field, and combined with the club I founded, it was my way of sharing my passion with the world. Would that be a good way of “pulling a thread”
Thank you for your advice.