Oh puleeze. I lived in the Midwest (not Chicago or Minneapolis) and interviewed for Brown for most of that time, and the Ivy fever (back in the 1980’s I might add, not the current feeding frenzy) was intense.
It’s great to pretend that everyone in the Midwest is too sophisticated to get caught up in what you guys believe is a NY/Menlo Park phenomenon… until you actually look at the admissions stacks and realize how many kids from the midwest are in the application piles.
The files don’t lie. If every kid in Ohio was trying to maximize merit aid, how are all these Ohio applicants finding their way to Cambridge and New Haven??? Schools that offer zero in merit aid?
Calling the BS police on this one. I interviewed for what was probably the LEAST popular Ivy for a decade and was kept busy from January - March. Public school, private school, parochial school- in a city with few alums and before the Internet, scores of kids were lining up outside my office in the early evenings for their interviews (before Starbucks, alas, and it wasn’t considered seemly to interview in a diner. My how times have changed!)