Do the top schools favor certain students by geography?

Chance Me / Match Me!
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<p>I'm a college senior from a suburb of Kansas City in Kansas. My school is at around 1600 people and has an excellent reputation and the same opportunities as large schools on the east or west coast. I've heard that some of the best engineering schools like MIT, Stanford, and Caltech will favor certain students on the basis of geography. Basically, that if there are two students equal in all other aspects applying to MIT, one from New York City and the other from Kansas, that they would favor the one from Kansas. Is this true? If so, how much emphasis do they put on this point.</p>

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<p>@bmstrecker‌ first of all, it is highly unlikely that two students would be completely equal except for location. You are talking about the exact same test scores, grades, course difficulty, teacher recommendations, extracurriculars, essays, and much more. There is no way that two students are equivalent, but to answer your question, Yes you will get a infinitesimally small boost for being from kansas but don’t expect that to get you in anywhere/make up for something. Sorry if I sound harsh</p>

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<p>I agree^ but in this situation I think they would choose the kid from New York City because they probably would expect him to be life-experienced in a way</p>

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<p>Yes, as Wharton 2020 says, there MAY be a slight boost for geographics. Depends on how lean the field is from your parts. There are fewer kids from Kansas at these top schools than there are from NY, Boston, other areas. Whether it translates to an exact proportion, I don’t know. The top schools tend to find top kids from everywhere.</p>

<p>Where there may be better boost are those schools that do not have the name recognition that HPYMS might have. Those schools give more of an emphasis to geographics since it is more difficult to get applicants out side of their area. The very top schools do not have that problem as top students from everywhere do apply to them. I know some highly rated regional schools do work at having national representation. But the very top schools do not have to do much of this.</p>

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<p>LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK REPRESENT! #631 WE DO IT BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE! COLLEGES KNOW IT! No im jk, but i wish it was like that… lol. Im actually not sure I think that states like NY has more opportunities for more EC’s or harder courses </p>

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<p>It would be very slight for schools such as CalTech, MIT, or Stanford.
If you apply to schools outside the top 25 universities and to LACs outside the top 20, being from Kansas would be a definite boost.
However it IS advantageous to provide geographic diversity and kids from NY, MA, NJ, or CA are definitely at a disadvantage for very selective colleges. :)</p>