Agreed. My question to OP was based on his stating in his first post that he was currently at a public university, which he subsequently corrected…
Brown legacy is a VERY VERY modest boost. If my classmates experience is indicative of the larger applicant pool, alum’s kids who have ended up at Penn, Dartmouth, Chicago, JHU (i.e. clearly they had something going for them besides legacy) were denied at Brown (usually a waitlist to “let them down easily”). So it might be a tie-breaker or a tiny tip factor, but without something else quite compelling (first novel was short-listed for a Pulitzer, parent is the former President of the United States or at the very least a Senator, parent is an alum who has already donated a named chair in neuroscience) I wouldn’t count on it as anything besides “good to know”.
OP- you seem like a terrific kid. I’d go with competitive chess and debate and being from Wyoming as being the most distinctive parts of your application- and choose schools accordingly.
Did I miss what your budget is?
“direct legacy [brown] (parent for undergraduate) indirect for [columbia] (parent for graduate)”
If you look at Section C7 in the Common Data Sets for both Brown and Columbia, “alumni/ae relation” is “considered” at each school but is not an “important” or “very important” admissions criterion.
You should also apply to your state’s flagship university, where you are a likely admit, just out of an abundance of caution. If worse comes to worst, there may be an honors program that you could get into there.
And just to clarify Gandalf’s fine post-- “considered” in the context of Brown means “duly noted”, NOT that it is a key element of an applicant’s candidacy. I am sure the Adcom’s get hundreds of “but my kid was waitlisted” phone calls in April.
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