<p>Safety example- school has 70% admission rate, median GPA 3,3 ACT 24.
Your child is 10% of her class, ACT 29-30, GPA 3,7. She/ he is only one person from your h. school applying to this college and college is more than 300 miles away from your home. She took rigorus workload, 4 years of math, science, foreign language , 4 AP classes, essay is deep from her soul, EC's not outstanding but there is one or two she is passionate about and achieved some substantial success.
Remember - for many small colleges process involves more than grades. Having something on her side, like geographic diversity, multilanguage ability, excellent creative writing talent might set her apart from other candidates and make school a sure bet.
Also by applying early, and I do not mean ED, it could be EA if they have it-your child will greatly improve her chances. By being compared to few other applicants, instead of hundreds/ thousands she will not only receive easy acceptance letter but will have possibility of nice merit scholarship from many schools.
IMHO by next school year your child has to have rough draft of several essays, resume, list of colleges and have teacher asked at the end of junior year about possible recomendations/ my D asked on the first day of senior year and was told that this particular teacher does only 2 recomendations and she was second person to ask/</p>