Of course adcoms would care about what happened.
Your high school is obviously rigorous enough (class rank and ACT score provide context for your GPA) so you shouldn’t worry. Excellent EC’s. Compelling story, good ability to write with a sense of humor that doesn’t offend (although humor is to be used sparingly in essays, if at all). Applying from Alabama gives you a boost for geographical diversity at most of these schools and rural Alabama means further boost.
Have you run the Net Price calculators and shown the results to your parents? Will they be able/willing to pay their EFC?
I’m not clear if you’re a junior (and the 12th grade APs are projected) or a senior (who already applied to all these schools).
Brown
Rice
Cornell
Vanderbilt
UPenn
Dartmouth
Georgetown
Middlebury
=> I think you’ll get into one of those if your essays are good.
WUSTL => only if your family makes less than 75k
Tulane (only possible with merit aid) = what does that mean?
Yale (just for kicks)
Harvard (see above)
=> both aren’t likely, but you never know; it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility.
Auburn legacy (safety)
=> if you’re a junior, you need to find one more safety you like.
What about another university’s Honors College? I think Pitt would be too hard (they really want 34) but what about UMass Commonwealth College or UMaryland…? The latter would be especially intriguing for interational relations/languages due to its location.
Emory (qualify for Emory Scholars?)
=> match
You need to find a few more matches. You don’t want it to be “top elite OR safety”.
Look into Davidson, Dickinson (the closest you’d have to a Middlebury “match”), perhaps Macalester (high match)?