I think you are going to need to really focus on matches and safeties. A younger applicant is rarely attractive to colleges, including highly selective ones. If you had a significant hook, or LORs that indicate “best in career student,” or even international awards, it might be a different story. But as you have presented yourself, you seem like a lot of the very bright, hard working students that are often described as “average excellent” by many on College Confidential.
As someone with only three years of high school, you are obviously competing against kids with 4 years. In part because of that extra year, those kids will have more awards, more ECs, more leadership, and often more maturity. It can be really difficult to distinguish yourself in that pool because you just haven’t had the time to develop in some ways.
I don’t have specific school recommendations because I am not that familiar with physics programs, but I would strongly suggest that you identify an affordable reach or two, but the bulk of your list needs to be a tier or probably two tiers lower. Most physics applicants to elite schools are going to have higher standardized test scores and more accomplishments, in part because they have had an extra year to do so.
Would it be possible to stay an additional year in high school? What is your motivation for finishing early? Another year could give you a more well-rounded application: you could improve your ACT, take another year of Spanish, develop teacher relationships that could lead to better LORs, and possibly expand your science awards to something more substantial. Plus, colleges would no longer be concerned about the liability of having a very young student on campus.
I don’t mean to be discouraging because you are clearly an impressive and motivated young person, but I do want you to be realistic given that graduating early isn’t necessarily seen as a plus to colleges.
I would say…Midd and Wes are not shoe ins either for this applicant or most others. Any college with less than 20% admission rate is going to be tough…and unpredictable.
@circuitrider what are the acceptance rates ED for Wes and Midd?
Lawrence U has been very briefly mentioned upthread (as a school with a 2-years-of-FL recommendation), but I think it deserves a close look as a “likely” school for you:
Of all its academic offerings, it is most known for Physics and for placing physics students in top grad programs.
It’s also known for its music conservatory and for the inclusiveness of its music programs, such that non-music majors can be as involved as they want to be in the rich musical life of the campus.
It’s a change of scene from Minnesota, but easy to access (straight shot across Wisconsin to Appleton)
Once there, it’s located right on the edge of a small city, easily accessible on foot and public transit, with a rich cultural life for its size… plus it’s not hard to get to Green Bay and Milwaukee, and more ambitious trips to Chicago are possible.
There are good natural settings nearby for outdoor activities, plus Lawrence has a whole separate North Campus in Door County Björklunden | Lawrence University
The Freshman Studies program, which launches the college experience of the entering class with a shared curriculum that fosters discourse among all of the new students and faculty across disciplines.
Lots of individual attention and mentoring, including the prevalence of 1:1 tutorials with faculty.
High likelihood that you could expect a financial aid package meeting your full documented need through a combination of need-based and merit aid. (Run the NPC)
EA application cycle which would put a decision in your hands by December 15th
Another possibility to consider, which could give you a valuable life experience and also mitigate some of the factors that could make elite-university admissions tough (younger age, less life experience, weak foreign language experience) would be an extra post-graduation year of high school abroad through AFS or similar organization. You could likely find enough advanced coursework at many of the possible locations to make your time productive academically, and meanwhile you could apply to colleges with your entire junior year of US high school already on the books, as other applicants do. There are scholarship opportunities available, particularly if you apply early. You’d get an international experience with an age-matched peer group - in many ways this can end up offering much more effective cultural immersion than most college-level study abroad programs. And that kind of colleges you’re targeting could value the broadened perspective you could bring to their communities as a result of having such an experience, as well as feeling more reassured about your social/emotional maturity as a potential entering freshman.
Someone better motivated than me would have to back out all the athletic recruits (both Middlebury and Wesleyan are perennial NESCAC powerhouses), and a negligible number of legacies and development cases in order to arrive at a realistic figure. I’m totally guessing that it’s higher than 20% for both LACs.
For this past year’s freshman class at Williams, there were 715 early applicants with 238 accepted. That’s an early acceptance rate of about 33%.
Williams brings in about 175-200 athletes each year. In an interview within the past couple of years, a Williams administrator estimated the number of legacy admits at 35. We don’t know how many of the early admits were athletes or legacies, but there are enough of the 2 combined to take up nearly all of the early admit spots.
Wesleyan is a different story because it’s enrollment (3250) is more than 50% higher than Williams’ (2121) but there are fewer spots (725) going to athletes than at Williams (750-800) due to there being fewer teams at Wes.
In this past year’s freshman class at Wes there were 494 early admits out of 900 who applied early. This is an early acceptance rate of about 55%. Even if all of the athletes and legacies were early admits, there would still be plenty of room for other applicants. Wes in fact would seem to have an early admit rate well over 20% for non-athletes and non-legacies , a clear advantage over their overall acceptance rate of about 19% that year.