<p>Just wondering where the geographically advantaged applicants reside. Are they in less competitive/ less represented areas? Does an applicant from Massachusetts have a better/worse chance than someone from the Midwest?</p>
<p>You may already know this, but a strong candidate from say North Dakota will have a better chance than the same qualifications from Massachusetts or New York. I think they compare you to the opportunities available to you, which probably increase as you get to populous states.</p>
<p>"Just wondering where the geographically advantaged applicants reside."</p>
<p>Places with fewer applicants/top students/opportunities.</p>
<p>"Are they in less competitive/ less represented areas?"</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>"Does an applicant from Massachusetts have a better/worse chance than someone from the Midwest?"</p>
<p>Worse.</p>
<p>OK thanks. If my high school does not often send kids to HYPS, is that a good thing or a bad thing?</p>
<p>It could be good-or your high school may not be very good at preparing its students for the top schools.</p>
<p>^yeah, it could be good that your school is underrepresented, but it could also be bad if your school doesn't prepare its students</p>
<p>The committee seems pretty decent at selecting students who can handle the work. I come from a small, rural high school and I didn't have too much trouble getting good grades. I'm the second person to come to Harvard from my high school in its 40 year history.</p>
<p>My school is probably one of the best in my (suburban) area. Its alumni consists of very accomplished CEOs /business man, public officials (lawyers,judges State Congressman, US congressman), talk-show hosts, NFL players, NHL players, will have NBA players in 2-4 years, professional (Olympic wrestlers, UFC fighters). If not the best, one of the best sports programs in the country. It has a couple specialized programs typically reserved for college campuses. A student can take up to 7-9 AP classes (I know, not too good, but we are forced to take religion classes every year)) and Linear Algebra. It is a catholic school so it does not have a ranking. It was awarded a Blue Ribbon distinction several years back for education. Usually, Harvard sends an admissions representative to our school, but they stopped this year for some reason. Our HS record toward H over 8 years: Harvard ( one out of 3 applicants who had 1500+ SAT were accepted, others were waitlisted or deferred and the two who were deferred committed to another school b4 they were denied. The one who went to H was unhooked.</p>
<p>I'm suprised CC hasn't begun using GD as an acronym like URM, EC, Adcom, etc.</p>
<p>Correction: One of the best, if not the best, sports program in the STATE.</p>
<p>my hs has NEVER sent anyone to harvard...its a suburban public school in north jersey (surrounded by schools that send kids to ivys)....i think my rank and test scores prove i can handle the work (not trying to be pretentious)...the question is, will they hold my hs against me?</p>
<p>no but you are up against huge competition</p>
<p>My hs sent a kid a few years ago; 2400 on the SAT. So. :</p>
<p>I find this all together not true. Harvard doesn't need geographic diversity. No matter what they are going to have some of the top student from an area like North Dakota applying anyway. I think geographic diversity is true for most schools but not Harvard. Harvard prides itself on a lack of quotas. Straight from the Harvard FAQ admissions page</p>
<p>-Are a student's chances of admission hurt if there are other applicants from his or her school or community?
No. There are no quotas for individual schools, communities, states, or countries. A student's application is compared rigorously with others from around the globe.
Harvard</a> College Admissions Office: frequently asked questions</p>
<p>I'm from Westchester County, which is notorious for having many applicants to Ivies, but the Harvard acceptance rate for Westchester is about 16%, so our highly competitive area certainly isn't being penalized. I think it boils down to they can get they best of the best no matter what, and that's exactly what they want. They aren't going to accept an underqualified person from nowhere, because all the best students from nowhere applied anyway. Am I making sense?</p>
<p>It is difficult to believe that they don't need geographic diversity, and I have not seen anything published from them either. Use Princeton's and Penn's published data to estimate how many Harvard potentially needs from you state.</p>
<p>Thank God I'm from the far reaches of New Jersey, where hardly anyone applies.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>lol ^, Sherlock, they say they do not use race "quotas", but we all know how much of an advantage it is to be a URM. I think they will accept a person in a rural area over someone in your area with similar stats, ex-cs, essays, etc.</p>
<p>Yeah, I know, which is a bit hypocritical. I still think that being a URM helps you less with Harvard than say Dartmouth or Penn. Still, my post was talking about geographic diversity, which I would not be surprised if they didn't consider. My friend at Harvard says that the overwhelming majority of the students are still from overrepresented areas like New York, New England, CA. I think the statistic about Westchester County shows it best. It probably isn't that high with other ivy leagues</p>
<p>Sherlock, the number is probably high from those areas because those areas just have an insane amount of qualified applicants. Just because students in an underrepresented area may have a slight increase of chance for acceptance, does not mean that students in underrepresented areas will make up a large portion of accepted students. Look at accepted students in terms of race: Harvard classes are still made up of a majority of white students. I brought up the URM point because you used the fact that Harvard has no quota for geographic regions as an argument. If you read the FAQ on Harvard's website, you will see just how ambiguous and indirect their answers to admissions questions really are.</p>
<p>I know the numbers are high from those areas because they have an insane amount of qualified applicants. Meaning, that there isn't some sort of quota against them or their numbers wouldn't be so high. Having an acceptance rate almost three times the national average for Harvard in probably one of the most competitive counties is a moderately strong against a quota, or they would just select less from that area. </p>
<p>I see what you're saying about how maybe 30% of Westchester applicants would get in from other states, but we will never know that exact proportion. In my schools it's true at least, with kids rejected from Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Penn probably in part due to their lack of geographic diversity, but accepted at Harvard. Other schools admit to having geographic diversity being a consideration, so why wouldn't Harvard? </p>
<p>This argument can't end, since it's really just a matter of if you believe what Harvard admissions and their representatives tell you, which each person has to decide on their own.</p>