Hi all,
Just a few months ago I was a paranoid senior worrying about not getting into any colleges, so I did what many high school students do, I went on college confidential and asked people to chance me. Every single person that chanced me seemed to tell me that I would not get into many of the schools on my list. (Check my previous posts if you want to see). Having people tell me I would get rejected from many schools led me to apply to millions of safeties, some of which I did not even end up getting into.
All I am here to tell you is to STOP THINKING THAT WHAT PEOPLE SAY ON THIS SITE IS ALL TRUE. They aren’t college admission counselors, they don’t know everything. In most cases, they are people your age who think they know everything about college admissions because they read through U.S. Best News rankings once. Another thing, you never know what is going to happen; it is not as linear of a pattern as it may seem. I was rejected/waitlisted from a lot of schools that I was so sure I would get into (not ranked super high), and accepted/waitlisted at some schools where I never even though I had a chance.
I was so sure I wouldn’t get into my dream school that when I opened up my admission portal I was prepared for rejection, and even told myself I didn’t want to go there (all to make myself feel better about my potential rejection), but here I am, UCLA bound and damn proud of it! So to every single person worrying about their stats (my particular worry was that my scores weren’t high enough), RELAX. People on this site focus WAY too much on scores, which makes sense because they don’t have all of the other essential pieces to your application. I’m not telling you that you can get into Harvard with a 2.0 GPA and 1500 SAT if you have killer essays, I’m just saying that if you are a bit below the 25th percentile, this will not ultimately lead to rejection from your dream school. 
Anyone else have a similar story to mine?
tldr: Don’t trust everything people tell you on this site, they know just as much as you do about what college admissions counselors are thinking.