<p>When we visited Brown with my daughter, we took the science tour and met, by coincidence, the rep who reads the applications for our state. He told us that he wasn't interested in student council presidents, which we took to be good news, because the D had no leadership positions to speak of. The rep said that he was looking for unusual students, and he mentioned a boy from Kentucky who had moved away from home, was living in an apartment and supporting himself . . . while still in high school. We still thought that meant that the D had a fighting chance. Fast-forward several months: the D was deferred, and I had the cc call and ask for some details. The rep wasn't interested in a girl who had grown up in Paris and maintained fluency in several languages; he wanted students whose parents either hadn't attended college or even graduated from high school. Worrying about geographic balance is the least of it!</p>