Is applying from across the country an advantage?

Applying to College
1

I am a junior in high school from Oregon and toured a few schools in New York City this week. In all of the fairly large tours, a vast majority of the prospective students were from the Northeast. I only met a couple of people from the West Coast but they were all confined to California. I’m sure this is partly due to the fact that NYC is so far from the West Coast and it is much more expensive to go to NYC and tour schools than for someone on the East Coast. But, both NYU in Fordham want students from all around the country and NYU makes sure to room people together who are from different states or countries. One of my tour guides at Fordham even said that a majority of the students come from the Northeast. I got the impression that it is an advantage that I am applying from Oregon.

Do you think that is true? And does anyone happen to know how many people apply to these schools from Oregon?

Thanks!

2

If this is true

then yes it would be an advantage to be from the west coast. It might be an even greater advantage to be from Alaska or Wyoming. But you are already from Oregon and if you’d like to get into those schools then apply. Nothing you can do about it at this point.

3

Advantage maybe, big advantage no. I always look at small things like these as the tie breakers. It’s not going to make up for a weak application and get you in if you aren’t qualified but maybe a kid from OR who demonstrated interest and visited would bump you ahead of an equal applicant from a few miles away who they feel is using the school as a safety. You still need to be a qualified applicant. NYU already has students from all 50 states so it’s not that unique to be from OR.

4

Schools in the metro NYC area are closed this week.

So none of the kids I teach did a college visit last week. A good number (including my daughter) are visiting schools this week instead.

So I think your premise is flawed.

5

Hey-yo, I’m from oregon too, lol. In my opinion, I agree with 123mom. However, I’ve also been told that some schools, like Georgetown, may draw a little more from East coast private schools.

6

Schools want geographic diversity. It may be the tie breaker in some situations.

7

According to a popular college data site, Fordham had 8 out of 2,199 students from Oregon in the class entering in 2016, and NYU had 23 students from Oregon out of 6,133.

8

Bjkmom, I definitely toured multiple schools in New York Feb 16-18 haha. The weather may have gotten worse after I left but I didn’t really care to follow up on that.

9

Thank you to everyone for their input! I figured it would be more of a tiebreaker if anything :slight_smile: