<p>This question has been floating around in my head recently. I know colleges see some areas of the country as underrepresented in their student body, and most of those are places like Wyoming, Alaska, Oklahoma, etc., so students coming from these areas sometimes get a bit of a boost. </p>
<p>However, do colleges take into account whether a student's area of a state is underrepresented? I live in Michigan, and I know that a lot of kids from the Detroit area (mainly the prep schools) end up at top (non-Michigan) universities and LACs, so Michigan isn't exactly the most underrepresented in the college world. However, I don't live in Detroit; I live in a less densely populated area that is definitely not as common at those top schools. Will colleges take this into account at all? Will they even bother to check? Or will they just assume what a lot of people assume: if you live in Michigan, you must live in Detroit? </p>
<p>Geographic diversity does matter for a lot of top LACs. They all love to say that they have students from all fifty states.</p>
<p>Michigan is a pretty populous state, so just being from Michigan probably won’t help much unless you are from a farming area or perhaps in the Upper Peninsula, in which case you may be able to point that out in your application or essay.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link, ctyankee, but that’s not quite what I had in mind.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone else for answering; unfortunately, I’m not from the UP (though I often wish otherwise), so I didn’t expect any kind of benefit from living where I live, besides having a great place to grow up.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about it. Probably not a factor one way or another. Michigan exports enough students that no school needs to worry about checking the box for “Michigan” as they’re trying to get to 50-state geographic diversity. On the other hand, it’s not an “over-represented” state, either. With an outstanding in-state flagship, many top students in Michigan elect to stay in-state, consequently the numbers of Michigan residents enrolled at top private schools are probably lower than average as a percentage of the state’s large-ish population. Bottom line, it’s pretty much a non-factor ffor a Michigan resident (even for a Yooper, as most out-of-state private colleges are not likely to recognize any geographic distinction among various regions within Michigan).</p>
<p>Some schools don’t really care about geographic diversity, while others make quite a big deal about it. But quite frankly, geographic diversity only gives you a slight edge over the next candidate only if you are already competitive GPA/SAT/ECs-wise. </p>
<p>So, it matters a little, but don’t bank your entire acceptance on it.</p>