Geographic Diversity

College Search & Selection
1

<p>It seems that one of the big buzzwords in evaluating colleges these days is "diversity". School A sucks because it's just a bunch of rich white kids or School B is great because it has so many minorities. Rather than beat to death the issue of racial/ethnic diversity, I'd be interested to know what the geographic profiles at the schools atop US News' "National Universities" rankings are. Are some schools more regional in their appeal to candidates for admission? Obviously you would expect this to be the case with state schools (especially state schools with a hard cap on the number of OOS admits), but what about your elite private universities? Is there a compilation anywhere of the by region/state breakdown for the student population at the top schools in the country?</p>

<p>Perhaps an equally interesting study would look into the geographic diversity as students leave school. Do they hover in the general area around the school? Or do they fan out to different corners of the globe with degree in hand?</p>

2

<p>This is an interesting topic that rarely gets discussed here but geographic diversity does get discussed especially at LACs in the Northeast. Given similar or close profiles, (when I was involved with AdCOM/Bowdoin), a child from a farm in Montana would be selected over one from Newton Massachusetts. Why? Because at the time a vast majority of its applicants were already coming out of that tight New England pool. A Montana farm kid brings a different childhood and teen experience, a different world view then a child growing up in an affluent NE suburb. What so many young people don’t understand about this process is how little your scores play in these decisions AFTER you have made first cut.</p>