<p>i dont think geographic diversity should be your biggest concern as of right now..</p>
<p>geographic diversity is not a big issue but when i talked to a cornell undergrad admissions officer, she said that they would pick out the candidate from Arizona over the candidate from New York (that is, if they are both equally good). </p>
<p>i'm from Arizona btw. Almost no one goes to Cornell from Arizona. It's too cold for us.</p>
<p>throughout my 2.5 years at cornell so far, I've meet many people from many places. During my visitation to Arkansas this summer, I've met at least 4 people who applied to Cornell, one got accepted, but chose not to go. I've come to realize that because Cornell's an Ivy League school, you will ALWAYS get a handful of people apply there from each state and commonwealth, etc, however, some may get accepted and choose not to go. This may further perpetuate the low # of people from that state/area at Cornell.</p>
<p>I'd like to shed a little light on Cornell's application process. The reason monydad is correct in that underrepesented states actually have the same % as overall is for the following reason. First, i'd like to make it clear that not one admission's officer reads your essay. there are a few who each read your essay (they may split it up like one person concentrate on essay or academic or letter of rec) and collaborate and decide. Secondly, these people concentrate on a very specific part of the country/world. That means an admissions officer who is reading an application from CA will most likely not read applicants who are from NY. Therefore, those two applicants are not really in direct competition with each other unless they are both in the middle (not accepted or rejected, but unsure), and their applications goes to the same person for further review. This is why the acceptance rate for each state (or sometimes area if there's only a handful of people applying from a state) is pretty similar to the overall acceptance rate. I hope this wasn't too confusing but I simplified it as much as I can, but I just wanted to point out that geographic diversity doesn't really help because admissions officer are usually very in touch with their area, and have many applications to read from their area.</p>
<p>However, if one is an underrepresented minority...but that is another issue altogether.</p>