Am I unrealistic?
My kid is applying to college next year. I’ve hired someone to help him with apps, mostly writing essays.
Here’s some stats: He will graduate in Top 10% from school with history of getting into top schools. Very rigorous course load. Has a B in Spanish in freshman year and junior year. We live in a state that’s somewhat competitive but not like CA or MA. We are Asian, not Chinese or Indian.
Awards: USAJMO, 5x AIME qualifier, AMC 10 DHR 2x, Top 10 in a particular event in HMMT, a few other state math champion awards, USACO Gold, a few other top 5 state programming team awards. Scored 130+ in AMC 12 in 2025 but not enough to get DHR (if you follow math you probably know why).
Activities: 1) By the end of the summer, he will have attended 3 selective summer programs (think PROMYS, ROSS, SUMAC, HCSSIM). This summer he is attending as a second year to one of these where he will be conducting group research; 2) paid teaching job since 10th grade; 3) volunteer teaching job with nonprofit; 4) volunteer work with environmental nonprofit - not a lot of hours; 5) accepted to NonTrivial Research Program - proposed topic on environmental issue - did not advance to second stage; 6) will most likely be President of 2-3 Clubs next year; 7) Writes a lot of problems for statewide contests 8) Has initiative that’s international but low impact.
So the counselor we talk to is very dismissive about applying to the top 10 schools (“you can try but I don’t see the match”). She wants him to ED to CMU or Chicago. We want to give the Top 10 schools + Ivies a try so my kid doesn’t want to ED to either of the schools she mentioned. Are we unrealistic?
I know his stats aren’t perfect, too math focused, boring teaching ECs, but he has solid summer programs and pretty good awards, etc. Am I delusional to think my son has a shot at a Top 10?