Regarding the midwest being in to ivies discussion, obviously, there are thousands of kids from the midwest who apply to ivies, many of who who are quite interested in attending. It’s no surprise that an interviewer in the midwest would be busy. However, this does not mean that this ivy sentiment represents more than a small minority, nor does it mean that there is similarly sized minority in the northeast. If you look at rate of matriculation to ivies per population, it’s tremendously higher in the northeast… comparing some states/colleges, it’s more than 10x higher in northeast than midwest. Assuming the number of applications in different states is highly correlated with number of matriculating students, this would suggest that students from the northeast as a whole are far more likely to apply to ives than students from the midwest. This result should not come as surprise since students are more likely to favor closer colleges. If you do the same comparison from Stanford, it shows more than 40% of the US students in the entering class come from California, a much higher rate of matriculation per population in CA than in northeast states or anywhere else. However, this does not mean most students in CA are in to Stanford or most students the northeast are in to ivies. Instead I agree with emiliybee above that this HYPSM focused group is a minority. As discussed earlier in the thread, it certainly was a minority in the upstate NY HS I attended. Along the same lines, I don’t agree with the earlier comparisons between the number of vals/sals in the country and number of ivy slots. Most of those vals/sals probably are not particularly interested in attending and did not apply to any ivies, especially those who attended non-selective public HSs located in more distant states from the northeast.