<p>No, the uncle won’t help. Brown admissions have skyrocketed in competitiveness, not that they weren’t always difficult, but acceptance is now below 10%. You will have to bring something special to the table to overcome the lowish scores. (Brown’s great, though, so if you can go do it!)</p>
<p>The legacy status may only help you a little at UVA. They have to treat all instate students of taxpayers pretty equally, so you don’t get the boost some privates may give. However legacy students are admitted at a higher rates. That seems more to do with them being a smaller more highly qualified pool than the nonlegacy pool, than any significant tip factor.</p>
<p>I think you should discard Berkeley too. UC’s only accept a very tiny portion of out of state students, and these will be exceptional in everyway, so the numbers are not in your favor.</p>
<p>I know UNC does have a geography program, a friend attended. You wil need to look that up school by school.</p>
<p>If you want a west coast school look at USC and the Claremont Colleges. But you’d better do your EFC calculation right away, and you aid will change if the parent employment situation changes, so talk to them about affordability.</p>