Parental brag time - kid scored a 180. Many thanks again to
@Instinctive for sharing his special sauce about cracking the last few questions.
He is still fixated on graduating without debt, so will be looking hard at Chicago, Columbia and NYU with their full-ride scholarships. From the no-aid schools, Harvard and Stanford are off his list. But I am going to push him to really consider Yale (which I know isn't an automatic admit, though I feel like a 4.0/180 with good extracurriculars give him a better than 50-50 shot). For starters, I still think academia might really be what's best for him (even though he currently doesn't think so) and Yale Law School is the place for that. It also seems like a less stressful place with its grading system.
Finally, and this is hard to articulate, it feels like graduating from YLS is one of the closest things our society offers to guaranteed access to the penthouse suite, to the VIP Lounge. My parents didn't go to college. My wife and I are on the very low end of upper middle class. We would be in immediate financial distress if either of us lost our jobs. Because we're currently paying two (discounted) tuitions, we drive a Honda Odyssey with 223,000 miles on it. I don't have any connections that are going to help get him a job. So I see Yale Law as this EZ Pass to success and financial security that we've never quite enjoyed.
I can't help but feel that his extreme debt aversion stems somewhat from the financial circumstances in which he was raised, and that maybe taking loans for Yale would be worth it. I am also aware that these feelings might be influenced by my own egotistic desire to say my kid goes to Yale Law. Still a way to go before he has to make that decision, and of course one that he will ultimately make but he will seek my advice.
Anyway, he has forbidden us from telling anyone about his score (my sister's kid just took it too and didn't do as well as she wanted, and he doesn't want her to feel worse) so I'm doing my bragging here. Sorry not sorry!