<p>does living in a less competitive state (i live in alabama) give me an edge in the admissions process? i have pretty good stats and go to one of the best high schools in alabama (i think, it was top 5% in newsweek) and like 5 students last year got into really good colleges (one got admission from priceton).</p>
<p>It helps a mite. Rumor is the previous dean of admissions was more ga-ga over geographic distribution than the present one, though.</p>
<p>Living in an underrepresented state really won’t help you that much. I mean, it doesn’t hurt to be in an underrepresented state because schools want geographic diversity. But I don’t think it really is a helping factor (i.e. if you are on the fence in terms of getting admitted or not, where you live probably won’t impact whether or not you get accepted/rejected).</p>