<p>I went to a Northwestern Information Session the other night. They gave out brochures that had everything a typical college brochure would have. In it, there was a map of the United States showing the places that had varying amounts of undergrads of Northwestern. This was done by different shades of purple (dark purple meant lots of represenation (say California and Texas, +301 Undergads), where a violet purple meant good represenation (i.e. Pennsylvania and Florida, 201-300), where lightest/pale purple means little represenation (i.e. Kentucky and North Carolina, 21-100) and gray means virtually no represenation (i.e. Maine and Montana, 1-20). If you are from a region with less undergrads (like a grey or pale purple state), does that add to the "geography factor" on admissions?</p>
<p>The geo factor isnt going to affect you much at all, but if it came down to identical people with the same resume, the kid from the less represented area would win out</p>
<p>I don’t know much about NU’s geographic Affirmative Action program (of if it even has one), but I know the school is looking to diversify its population. I’d say someone from a highly underrepresented area definitely has an advantage.</p>
<p>Yeah, schools tend to favor accepting a person with decent credentials from a "different" place over a person with better credentials from the "usual" place.</p>
<p>"The geo factor isnt going to affect you much at all, but if it came down to identical people with the same resume, the kid from the less represented area would win out"</p>
<p>That's exactly what they say about legacy and i believe legacy to have a big part in the acceptance process.</p>
<p>I agree with your response to some extent...but NU, like every school, is a numbers whore...I think somebody with a little bit higher test scores might win over somebody from say North Dakota. But this is all opinion, I have no facts to back this up.</p>
<p>yeah, there are advantages to legacy (ie: donations, increased endowment) that are not present in employing geographical affirmative action.</p>
<p>Sure there is. Northwestern, like many other schools, can claim that it has students from all 50 states. Geographical AA would bring the school, at the least, bragging rights that other schools enjoy. While Northwestern is big on numbers, think about it (school motto!), the school only needs one person to be from an underrepresented state to do this, and one person’s stats that are a little lower won’t do much to the school’s overall stats.</p>