Seems like you have the tail wagging the dog here. I say that because it seems like the tests you’ve taken are shaping your school selection and you express willingness to change your career goals if you end up at MIT (where you might not have the GPA needed for med school) in which case you’ll switch your goals entirely. That seems backwards to me. You’ll probably be happier by first considering what type of school is the best fit for you. Not in terms of credentials but in terms of day to day aspects of the school-it’s size, located in a city, suburbs or country, big or small, etc. Then consider various topics you can see yourself studying and goals you want to work towards (like med school, for instance). Then choose schools that offer the full breadth of topics you might end up focusing on. In short, you want a school where you’ll thrive while there and that will get you where you want to go. Once you are clear on those factors, choose the schools that fit and then evaluate the extent to which you have the credentials that would suggest it is a realistic choice and consider how realistic each school is from a financial standpoint. This approach, which seems the opposite of the way you’ve approached things so far, will ensure that every school on your list is a good fit.
I see a lot of referencing of affordability in the thread. That is a dicy issue but as I’m sure you know, many of the top schools are both need blind and promise to meet full need. Now there is a difference between need and want-and this may differ between a school and parents-as some parents may not want to spend as much as the school thinks they can afford. But if the issue is affordability, those schools that say they will really do meet student needs. Thus I would consider that variable and if affordability is an issue, look at the schools that promise to meet need.
One last point, I disagree with someone who suggested that the schools will be comparable in terms of rigor. That isn’t really true-and which are more rigorous may also depend upon the match between what is required and your skill set. Rigor is also influenced by the typical student credentials of each school. Even engineering courses will be a bit less rigorous at schools with students with more varied backgrounds than at those with less homogenity in terms of backgrounds in science and math. On average, engineering and math/science courses at schools like CMU, CalTech, MIT, are likely to be more rigorous than they would be at, say, Brown or Dartmouth where student backgrounds will not be as uniformly strong in math and science.
Don’t let test scores or GPA determine your life path.