Significant? Of course it’s always best to have higher grades. I will briefly tell you about my D, who applied to Brown and Tufts. Her old SAT was equivalent to 1530 on the new test. Her grades were similar to yours. Very rigorous courseload. Two SAT 2, 750 and 720. 6 AP scores of five, one score of four. Violinist for eight years. Of course you are very different people, but by the time her apps were in, we understood she had virtually no chance. She was not exceptional. Gtown, Cornell, Brown are looking for exceptional people. She might have had a shot at Tufts, but Tufts is looking for really high GPAs from its unhooked students.
Read this: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1878059-truthful-advice-about-getting-into-top-colleges-for-your-average-excellent-student-p1.html
You are an “average” excellent student, I would say. That’s a compliment:-) You should definitely apply to a couple of reaches, because you never know. But don’t appoach it as a lottery, because it isn’t. They don’t randomly choose.
@Jeanvaljean123 , if you are male, honestly, you have excellent chances at some of the very best LACs. Seriously consider Amherst, Middlebury, Hamilton, the Maine NESCACs, and many other fine schools. Esepcially if you aren’t a STEM person. These schools offer so much and are top notch. They have very high retention rates, produces many Fulbright and Rhodes Scholars, and do extremely well in grad school admissions.