What Sybylla is asking is if you will be trying to get accomodations in college such as the extra time accomodation you will be using for the SAT and ACT. If students had extra time or other accommodations in high school, sometimes they request the accommodations for college as well.
As you say, your school won’t recalculate your GPA with the first half of senior year grades. (I suspect this is pretty common.) But colleges look at midyear reports, and I think whether your semester grades add up to the equivalent of a 3.1 GPA or, say, a 3.7 will make a big difference.
And even with the different New Zealand system, it would help if your record for junior year can convey you did well (assuming you did). Maybe you can ask your New Zealand school to provide some context that will help those looking at your application.
If you have a positive junior and first half senior record, and increase scores as you say, a number of the schools mentioned by warblersrule and prezbucky seem possible. Even there, though, there is a range in selectivity, with schools like Trinity and Connecticut at a 35% acceptance rate, and ones like Beloit and Allegheny more like 65%.
I think acceptance rates could be a good initial indicator (with exceptions, of course):
under 25% - out of reach
25-50% - anywhere from high reach to mid-match, depending
50-70% - probable match
above 70% - possible safety
What is said about McGill is true, from what I recall but I thought they also don’t use your freshmen grades. Maybe this helps you.
Has your family run the Net Price Calculator for various schools? Your grandmother’s gift is wonderful, but that covers less than 2 years of college. You, individually, can only borrow $5500. a year, with slight increases. The first step is to get a handle on the finances.
Looking at the specific schools, the reaches look unrealistic, as do some of the matches, like U Washington and St Andrews. NYU is known for poor financial aid, so if your family cannot afford to write the $70,000 check each year, that is not a good option. If Rutgers looks at unweighted gpa (some publics, like IU Bloomington, take the highest gpa, so look at weighted, others un-weight all weighted gpas, like Wisconsin), that might not be a safety. I’d be surprised if Oxy is a safety either. Safeties might be schools like Ursinus, Muhlenberg, Temple. Midwest schools like Earlham, Beloit, Wooster, Lawrence might also be worth a look. My concern, as a parent, is that the private counselor is overestimating the value of study abroad plus URM status. There is a story to tell, which can come through in the guidance counselor’s recommendation, about ADHD etc. and how you have stabilized grades. But I would worry about getting closed out of affordable options with the list in its current shape.
Why IS the college adviser so optimistic? And yes, are you expecting the colleges on your list to continue to extend the accommodations you have had in school? Have you or the counselor done any digging about that? Do all universities do this? Does St Andrew’s?