Posting this now that the dust has settled and the only thing left for this cycle are waitlists. I found it useful when I was starting the cycle to look around for people with similar stats, especially since they are a tad unbalanced... And see where they had success to help construct my list. Hopefully someone finds this useful.
I got interviews at about 2/3 of the schools that I applied to. Honestly I would have applied to fewer to save on the application costs, especially since I was not able to attend all of them. I got accepted to most of my interviews, with a few waitlists and a few rejections. I would say my best acceptances are Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and Pitt. I did have interviews at 3 top 10s (based on the current USNWR lol) that translated to one waitlist and 2 rejections.
Interestingly, I got very little love from California. No interview at UCSF and UCLA, waitlist at UCSD, acceptance at Keck. Radio silence from the others. I thought my research and service fit in well with their missions, and my stats were good enough, but it didn't pan out :/
Overall I would say my cycle was successful but I did not at all understand why it turned out the way it did. I got some love at some known stat whorish schools which I would NOT expect given my GPA without an upward trend. I did not get into my top schools where I felt I best fit their mission and were more lenient on GPA (based on MSAR) where good research and ECs were more important. What does that mean? Who knows, mostly that this whole process really is a crapshoot and to never count on things turning out the way you expect, especially if you are gunning for a specific school or state.
I didn't get any scholarship offers in case you were wondering.
