Teen here, I think that I have also applied on the same ~10 colleges level rather than 1000x but I do feel like I have looked for many colleges and I tried to find some international colleges but I am not quite sure about them too. I even made an HN post about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48097377

Anyways I would love to hear your suggestion.

That being said, I feel like an number of colleges apply to rate might still be lower (people might look at many many colleges though) but still not increased 100x

but I can't say the same about internship numbers and I feel like those numbers might have been very different.

I live in India and the Indian education system works a bit differently than American one which I think that I have hopefully fairly detailed it in the HN post.

Anyways, I would love if you would have some advice for which colleges I should apply to if you might have any as I would love to hear it!

Thanks and have a nice day!