1500+ tier
Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Duke, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, UChicago.
Typical admit: 1520–1560 SAT, top 5% class rank, 4–6 APs, strong essays.
1400–1499 tier
NYU, Carnegie Mellon, USC, Boston University, Georgia Tech, UCLA / UC Berkeley (OOS), Imperial, LSE.
Typical admit: 1430–1490 SAT, multiple APs / A-Levels at A/A*, leadership roles.
1300–1399 tier
Top US public flagships, NYU Abu Dhabi (need-blind), strong scholarship-tier admissions internationally.
Reachable from a 1200 baseline with 12–16 focused weeks of preparation.