<p>For help on your essays, read the latest post from the website “Essay Hell” which is dedicated to helping students with their college essays - it’s all about Prompt 1 for the UC’s. Peruse the entire website, it’s got great ideas for essays and good advice on how to avoid mistakes. Tell a story that shows who you are because of what happened to you, and take the reader right in the middle of “what happened” as it happened.</p>
<p>What’s your class rank? I think you can definitely reach for UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD. With UCSC as a safety.
Other schools where your grades, academic success, and grit would be taken into account are the Claremont, especially Pitzer, Occidental, and further away on the Coast Whitman or Willamette. A smaller school you’d be sure to get into would be Whittier or St Mary’s of California.
Run the Net Price Calculators on each school website (each school calculates differently).
You can still apply to Stanford, but keep your hopes in check, the likelihood that you’d get in are very very slim (you’d need a first-prize in something to have a shot).</p>