Admissions chances - country of birth or nationality?

I know that this doesn’t matter a great deal, but I have read on various places that where you are from can have a slight impact on college admissions, ie those from places who rarely send students to the states have a slight advantage.

How would they determine which country you’re from? Is it where you were born, or where you are a citizen or currently live?

The only reason that this has arison is because I was looking into the Green Card lottery and realised that despite being a UK citizen, I am still eligible for the lottery because I was born in a different country. Now I’m wondering if this would be a tiny tiny nudge in my favour for admissions.

Are you actually a citizen of this other country? Were you educated there? There are literally tens of thousands of applicants who have dual nationality. Maybe if it were somewhere quite unusual, and if you have been educated there, it might be a nudge in your favor. But I wouldn’t get excited about it. If you are culturally British and were educated there, I don’t think it will have any influence at all.

Having said that, if you are applying to schools with few international applicants, it could be more helpful.

@Lindagaf neither citizen not educated there. I wasn’t expecting it to make any difference to my application to be honest, I’m mostly just interested. Thanks though!

If you were just born there but are no longer a citizen or live there, you cannot claim a connection. I was born in one state, but have lived in 8 others. I don’t get to claim that, nor would a school care even if it was looking for a student from Mass (or Colo, Ore, Md, Wis…) The school wants to know where you live and where you attended high school (or college).