Colleges with Set Number of Students per Region

This discussion was created from comments split from: What are my chances for MIT, Stanford (From South Africa).

@momrath where I could find more information about colleges having a set number of admits per region?

@Marie28, please don’t hijack somebody else’s thread- start one of your own.

Afaik, no US university has a set number of admits per region. Over time, you can see where the biggest numbers are from, and some % trends seem pretty stable over time. Some unis post how many students the currently have by country (Harvard, for example), but most don’t.

I agree that there aren’t any set numbers, although being from a less represented group/part of the world (Native people of Canada, USA; sub-Saharan Africa) can be an advantage. And being from an over represented part of the world (Asia) can be a disadvantage.

Some state universities in the US have policies to ensure a minimum number or percentage of admits from the state (or maximum number or percentage from out-of-state).

I doubt that colleges have strict quotas by country or region, but they do have guidelines first to keep their international enrollment within their targeted percentage and second to assure that their international enrollees are balanced among different regions/ethnicities. This is more of an art than a science, but admissions professionals are good at estimating yields and budgeting financial aid.

It’s very difficult to get clear information on international admits. The colleges’ CDSs list the number of internationals enrolled and how many of those enrolled receive financial aid, but colleges seldom post the total number of international applications that they receive or the number that they admit.

Overall, many colleges have reported a substantial increase in the number of international applications for the Class of 2022. Whether this will result in an uptick in the percentage of internationals enrolled (and presumably admitted) or whether it will just mean lower international admit rates remains to be seen

Thank you everyone for answering! And I’m sorry about hijacking someone’s post. I’m just coming back to CC and I’m not aware of some of the features.