As a sophomore you have over a year to build your list. It is good your planning ahead, but you have plenty of time.
Your ECs are solid but they are not special when measured against your likely competition, so to echo a prior poster do not assume anything about what the numbers may suggest to you. You are a solid candidate for high match/low reach schools, but by no means should you bank on anything.
@BooBooBear Okay, I see. Do you have any school suggestions for low reaches?
I usually don’t sugar coat my opinion 
I wouldn’t get too too exotic with the college list. What ends up happening is either a bunch of rejections, or a bunch of acceptances to colleges you can’t afford. Even statistical matches can still be a financial reach if the college is private or out of state. Cost is your #1 consideration. If you can’t afford it, you’re not going there no matter how prestigious it is. The maximum you can take out in student loans for a 4 year degree is $27k. Your parents pay the rest or co-sign loans over to you. Co-signing is a terrible idea because it leaves you starting out a career with crippling debt. I think OSU would be an ideal match school. If you go out of state or private, be sure to do it in conjunction with a scholarship. With your stats, ultimately a safety school is not really a safety unless it includes a scholarship. Here’s my list:
Harvard (reach)-generous financial aid
Cornell (reach)-generous financial aid
OSU (match)
Michigan (match) (go for scholarship)
Michigan State (match) (go for scholarship)
I would just not get your hopes up with any schools in that 1-15 tier–the Ivies, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, UChicago, MIT, etc. Your “reaches” will be Georgetown, Emory, etc., schools in that 15-25 range, and then more realistic low-reaches/high matches are in the Wake Forest, W&M, Boston College, range. The top 15 schools, with the 30k+ applicants and sub-10% acceptance rates, are not even “reaches” but “wishes” unless you have a very special hook or go to a “connected” high school.
This is just my surmise from the “odds” involved, and not gospel. But I would construct my list (a) from a pragmatic rather than optimistic viewpoint, and (b) also think about bottom-up rather than top-down. Students always spend their time agonizing over reach #1 versus reach #2, when what they need to start with is picking a couple of safeties first, then a couple of solid matches next, THEN proceed to whether they like Duke, Penn, or Georgetown better. You also should check with your college counselor on “reaches”–schools vary in their success rate of applicants to these top schools, with some having advantages at a few schools and almost zero success at others. Your counselor may TELL you that you should reach for Penn over Brown, for example, because your school gets a kid or two accepted every year to Penn and has never had a kid accepted to Brown.
As long as you have siblings in college simultaneously, a “meets full need” school should offer good value.
Just be aware that if there is a year that you have no siblings in college, your EFC will rise, so that needs to be factored into your financial planning.
In general, schools with less than about a 30% overall acceptance rate tend to get “reachy” for regular decision.
By regular decision, a significant portion of the class is usually full,.and there are multiple people with similar stats applying for the limited slots, so decisions are typically made on criteria related to “building an interesting and diverse learning community” rather than on academics.
In essence, there is no way to know the decision criteria, which means that there is no way to determine if you “match” that criteria, which means you must consider the school a “reach”.
@Mastadon @BooBooBear @coolguy40 Thank you! That explanation helped a lot.
@booboobear- Using US News tiers can be dangerous, because selectivity does not always track rank. Also because schools are getting more selective with time, more and more schools become “reaches” each year.
I decided to apply the 30% selectivity criteria to the latest selectivity data and generate a list of “reaches” - I was quite surprised by the results - the list is getting pretty long (37 schools)!
Here is the list of Research Universities grouped by selectivity ranges
5% or less
Harvard
Stanford
6-10%
Columbia,Yale
Princeton
CalTech, MIT, U Chicago
Brown, Penn
11-15%
Dartmouth, Northwestern, Vanderbilt
J Hopkins
Cornell, Tufts
Rice
16-20%
UC Berkeley
Georgetown, USC, Wash U
UCLA
Notre Dame
21-25%
CMU
Emory
26-30%
American, Lehigh, Tulane, UNC Chapel Hill
BU, Northeastern, Michigan
Howard, UVA, Wake Forest
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate
Many universities had dramatic shifts this year alone:
BU: 22%
Northeastern: 19%
Tulane: 17%
Northwestern: 8.4%
Georgetown: 14.5%
Vanderbilt: 8.8%
USC: 12.9%
Yes wake and Bc are matches/high matches. But even matches say no to 75% of all kids. Not all were matches for the school like you. Keep doing what you are doing. You have time
For example. BC is a match for you. But they had 32k applications for 2200 seats. They accept more than that but it’s competitive. That’s all. You’ll be fine.
@pengsphils- you bring up an important point that I forgot to mention. One needs to consider that fact that acceptance rates can drop 5 or even 10% in a single year.
Note that all of the schools on your list are in popular cities…
Thank you, guys! I am nervous, but I realized that the college app process really starts in like a year.
I am wondering if UF would be a good idea? I love it there, and I will be above the 75th percentile in terms of GPA, and I will be at the 75th percentile for ACT scores. Maybe a scholarship?
UF is top 10 public university. #42 overall in usnwr. It’s beautiful. Kids are super smart and great sports. It’s a big time school and great choice too.
@privatebanker My mom has been trying to persuade me to look into it deeply, because literally my entire family (except for my cousin) lives in Florida. I absolutely love Florida, and I believe I would like it. My mom said she would definitely take me on a college visit there in the coming months. I also visited Vanderbilt over spring break, and I absolutely loved it. My aunt went there, so maybe she could write me an additional letter of recommendation if I apply there next year.
With bright futures UF is a steal for FL studentd with great grades it hyper competitive at UF and if you look at the UF threads you will see. But if yo can get into Vanderbilt you’ll get into UF.
Vanderbilt is elite and that would be great too.
My impression of Georgetown (knowing students that have attended) is that many students come from prep schools and boarding schools.
@sunnyschool I got that impression as well. I’ve been to Georgetown four times, and I have always loved it.
Emory could be a high match/low reach for you (especially if you apply during one of the early rounds)
@TheTennisNinja Just ran the Emory NPC with my family, and it came out to be 34K a year after inserting siblings savings stuff. I have three siblings who will be in college while I’m in college.