I am a long-time occasional poster and we are now 2 years past college admissions, so I am adding our experience here.
Our 2 kids are twins and now sophomores in college. In K-12, they were never grade accelerated but were subject accelerated in different combinations of math, cs and physics, attending a great public university nearby for these subjects later in high school. They had very high GPAs and test scores, and went to a large public high school with lots of AP courses, and they had great extracurriculars.
They applied to ~10 colleges each, with some overlap between the 2 on their selected schools. One strongly interested in engineering and the other physics. They got into ~half of the schools they applied to, with some really surprising rejections/waitlists. However, both got into one of the very top STEM schools and both accepted their admission offer from that school.
Both are absolutely thriving in the "drinking from the fire hose" learning environment at the school. And the engineer, who was always less extreme on the public school assessment scores throughout K-12, is at the top of his class in what is considered one of the toughest majors.
So, 2 conclusions from our experience. 1. College admissions depend on many factors other than ability to succeed academically - where you get in is not a measure of what you are capable of so don't take it too seriously! 2. If you are parent to an HG kid with siblings, the siblings may surprise you!
College has fulfilled our desire for challenge and stimulation for our kids in a way that K-12 generally didn't. It was worth the wait!
