College list advice

Answered

With the exception of Brevard College which kind of a random lower ranked college that doesn't align with your talents and experiences, none of the colleges on your list would be targets or safeties but all hard targets and reaches. I think it will be difficult to apply to the other 19 schools and compete with all the other high achieving international students.

From what little you shared in your profile, it seems you are a interested in astronomy, astrophysics, and are an accomplished pianist and ballet dancer. I would focus on those 3 areas when picking your college list. If you leverage your talents and skills, you will have more success at applying to certain schools than others.

Secondly, if you have the energy and persistence to get your SAT score up, I think that would be helpful. International students who submit high SAT or ACT test scores have a much better chance of getting in to better colleges. This is proven over the last 3 admission cycles. When Int'l do not have strong evidence of course rigor supported by APs, IBs or GCSE credentials, a high test score helps admissions officers feel better that that applicant has a high level of English reading, comprehension and math understanding. I personally would aim for a 1530-1560 SAT score if you are applying to these schools or a 35 ACT composite score. If it took me extra time to get there then I would much rather forgo applying ED or EA in order to submit an RD application with those higher test scores.

One major misconception many applicants have is that they think applying ED or EA gives them significant advantages statistically by a factor of 2X or 3X. This is not true at all at Top college like Ivies, Elites and Top liberal arts colleges. Why? Most of the applicant pool in ED or EA are 1.) The best students in that pool who pick that colleges as their 1st choice. 2.) Recruited Athletes, 3.) Legacy applicants who parents attended the college. 4.) Wealthy Donor families. 5.) Children of tenured faculty and 6.) High achieving low income/first generation students from marginalized backgrounds that are applying from community service organizations like Posse, Questbridge and other non-profits. So lets say you apply ED to Columbia University and there are 6500 in the ED pool, there are only 650 spots to fill each year regardless of the pool size. While 10% seems better than 3.7% overall admit rate, the real ED rate is really only about 5% because 1/2 the admits are ALDCs (althetes/legacies/development candidates/children of faculty). And you are still competing with applicants from category 1.) and 6.) as well.

I personally think you would do best at colleges that have some ties to their Arts Department where they are looking for dancers and pianists. I would re-categorize your list;

Top Colleges with ties to Dance/Music

-Columbia University / Julliard School dual degree program

-Barnard College at Columbia University dual major with dance or music

-Berklee College of Music / Boston Conservatory of Dance

-Johns Hopkins University / Peabody Institute (dance/music)

-Carnegie Mellon University- Dual degree CSA College of Science /College of Arts

-NYU - Tisch School / College of Arts and Science Dual degree

-Rice - double major or dual degree programs

-University of Rochester /Eastman School of Music - Dual major

-Harvey Mudd College (as part of the 5Cs Pomona/CMC/Scripps/Pitzer)

-Oberlin College and Conservatory -

Top Reaches (These would be super hard unless you get your testing up to a 99%+ bracket)

-Harvard

-Yale

-MIT

-CalTech (NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab)

-Princeton

-UChicago

-Stanford

-UPenn

-Cornell

Hard Targets

-USC

-UC Berkeley

-UCLA

-UT Austin

I'm not sure why these schools are on your list:

Emory, Tufts, Swarthmore, Brevard, University of Florida.