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<p>Very few schools have the national prestige and brand recognition as the Ivies. Try to come to terms with that in case you don’t get into Brown (or Yale). The odds are against you and nearly everyone else who applies.</p>
<p>WF may or may not be right for you (I have no connection to it and am not really pushing it) but reputation really shouldn’t be a factor at all. It is well known and respected in the SE. According to payscale.com data for graduates with only a bachelors degree, at mid-career WF graduates earn more on average than graduates of Boston College, Tufts, Wesleyan, Northwestern, UCLA, WUSTL, or JHU (among others). So name recognition does not seem to be holding them back.</p>