I brought this upon myself.

I completely disagree if the primary aim is to tend a top UC and you don’t get in, community college is the way to go. First of all there aren’t that many scholarships available at UCs that are based on Merit to begin with. Second with his AP credit if he starts this summer takes a full load in fall and spring and next summer he may actually have Junior standing. If you’re not from California and I’m not familiar with some of the community colleges I would hesitate to comment on this path. I know kids who’ve gone to some of the top community colleges like Santa Monica or Pasadena. Got 4.0 and got into UCLA or Berkeley when they wouldn’t have had a shot at all in high school.

OP don’t waste a 35 ACT on a CC.

@gearmom: OP has applied to at least 4 non-California publics. (U Penn, U Michigan, Harvey Mudd & the Univ. of Chicago “and a whole lot of other schools”.) OP needs to remain on those many waitlists & be prepared to reapply next year to schools which are likely to offer him merit aid. (He probably qualifies for a full tuition, room & board scholarship to the University of Alabama at Huntsville, for example.)

@MYOS1634 about 2) where would that list of colleges show up?

On the NACAC website and its usually pointed out on college confidential immediately too.

@MYOS1634, “A 35 act is worth A LOT of scholarship money whixh would be lost if he goes to cc.”

Fair, though note that CC+2 years of in-state UC is pretty cheap.

A full-tuition scholarship for 4Ys would only equal that at best. You’d pretty much need to get a full-ride to beat that.

As for “wasting” a 35 ACT, some would regard 2Ys and a degree from a top UC to be better than many alternatives outside the Ivy/equivalent tier.

Note that if you’re an American applying to top UK schools, you’d be wasting a 35 ACT as well (as they barely look at SAT/ACT scores, if at all).
Yet no one says to not go to Oxbridge/LSE/Imperial/St. A’s/Edinburgh/Durham/etc. just because a 35 ACT would be wasted there.

"Contact the schools which waitlisted you & let them know that you have not been accepted elsewhere "

Good Grief! this is TERRIBLE advise!! saying THAT makes the applicant look weak and desperate!!
All he SHOULD do is contact the college[s] and express a STRONG interest in going to that college and a statement that IF he is accepted he WILL attend. And he should ask if there are any supplemental essays that he could submit for waitlist consideration.
His GC should ALSO contact the wait listed colleges admissions office/s [ the student will probably have to let his GC know which colleges he wants to attend the most] and let them know that the student WILL attend IF accepted.

I agree, do NOT contact the Wl schools to say you’ve not been admitted elsewhere!!!
Express your continued interest, list what you’ve done since January, ask what else you can submit, and meet with your GC ASAP so that s/he can contact the different colleges where you’ve been WL to ask what it’d take for your to be taken off the wl (basically is that a courtesy WL or is it real…)

II do not know why some of what I wrote was lined out??
{ me thinks my cat sat on my keyboard again?}

Are you sure you were waitlisted at UMich? It’s possible you’ve just been deferred to RD if you applied early action. Double-check the wording of your decision on Wolverine Access!

@menloparkmom I thought that you were writing in code or something. I was looking for the hidden meaning. LOL

In addition to some of the other comments, I would suggest also looking at schools still accepting applications. My S just got a letter from Rutgers saying they are still accepting applications. Clemson is open until 5/1 and I bet there are others. You may even be able to get merit $ from some of them. Some also have rolling admissions like Colorado School of Mines and Teaxas A&M. I think you have more options than you realize. Good luck!

I was in a similar situation two years ago and @lovespink is right. I found and applied to a school that gave me a full tuition scholarship midway through May. It definitely wasn’t in my plan originally, but I’m glad I went; and I transferred the following academic year and got better results.

^ it might help if you specify which school for what major and what amount of aid v. Amount of need. Thanks!

OP, my daughter had similar stats to your son. She is now a freshman at UCLA. We are Midwesterners, so daughter is OOS. In addition to UCLA, she applied to the the selective schools in the Midwest (U Chicago, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Grinnell, UIUC), but also applied to a bunch of safeties (Loyola U, St. Louis University, UIC). She got accepted at Notre Dame, Grinnell, UIUC, UIC, Loyola, SLU, but waitlisted at UChicago and Wash U, rejected at Northwestern). We found that the Jesuit schools (Loyola, SLU) are very generous with merit aid, and they are academically decent schools with ACT 25-75 percentiles in the 25-30 range. So your ACT of 35 would have blown away the competition ,ensured acceptance to these good schools, and would have gotten a lot of merit money to boot. These schools were my daughter’s academic and financial safeties, and she would have been happy to attend them if she got accepted nowhere else. Bottom line, for those who are in line to apply next year, you really have to nail down your safeties early on. The Jesuit schools are on a rolling admission system, so my daughter knew she would get into them as early as November. That removed a lot of the anxiety from the application process.