Oh, boy, here we go again! Another Ivy-obsessed Asian parent!
I can understand that your parents want you to apply to the Ivy schools, but it is bordering insane that they won’t pay the application fees for other non-ivy schools. Why? Can’t they offer? What is the problem of applying to variety of school beside Ivies?
As other have suggested, your parents really need to educate themselves and fast!. So go ask them to join CC, to read the students’ profiles on the Ivy League forums so they can have a better understanding of just how hard it is to get into a ivy school.
As a parent whose kid just went through the whole process, I am venturing my guess that you might get into a lower ivy if you have decent ECs. It would be next to impossible to get into HYPSM unless you’ve done something extraordinary on top of your perfect academic achievement.
I will use junior to prove the point.
His stats:
2400 SAT(one sitting), 3.985 UWGPA, Full IB diploma at a very competitive public high school.
Schools he applied to:
Reach schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT
Target schools: Duke, Vanderbilt, Emory, UNC
Safety school: USC, University of Washington.
The results:
Rejected: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT
Accepted: Duke, Vanderbilt with Full academic scholarship, Emory with full academic scholarship, UNC (honor), USC with Presidential scholarship, UW with full tuition scholarship.
He is now happily at Vanderbilt pursuing his dream in Creative Composition (literal. musical, and binary).