The Worst States

<p>NY? I read something the other about high school dropouts. Only 54% of students actually graduate from HS. And NJ has like 88%. The number one. so why is NY competitive, maybe the foreigners.</p>

<p>New York! Not only does it have absolutely terrible public universities, it has so many people that it disadvantages one when applying to private schools outside the state.</p>

<p>I live in CT, and also planning to apply to mostly New England schools. This is when connections come in handy :P</p>

<p>XCotter: Agreed! :) Thank God for my recs and alumnae/i connections.</p>

<p>I was trying to say that VA's bad because of all the smart and super competitive people in Northern Virginia. The rest of the state gets overlooked.</p>

<p>Admissions people might not know the difference between Northern Virginia and the rest of the state, but there is a HUGE difference.</p>

<p>I agree with Bentley, and i'm a NoVa (northern VA) kid myself. At UVA, something like 2500/8500 <em>instate</em> undergrads are from JUST Fairfax County (biggest/most populated/richest county in VA). Not to mention another ~1000 from the surrounding counties. It's simply because there's a ton of money put into the public schools, and the privates are top-notch, and thus there are wayy more resources available to NoVa students than those in other parts of the state. Thus, if you're not a NoVa student, and you're IS trying to apply to a Virginia school, well, it's a tough ride. I think this situation is pretty unique to Virginia, and it's the subject of many heated debates</p>

<p>Besides, VA, I think CA and Northeastern states (mainly NY, NJ) have tough times as well. CA schools are overwhelmed with applications, but there are a ton of schools with huge populations. As for northeastern, the schools up there are excellent and mostly private, and thus are not required to take a certain percentage of IS students (like CA and VA schools do). Plus, there's a large percentage of private schools which most likely have top-notch students.</p>

<p>Beyond those typical states, I think other rough areas are the poorer states (LA, OK, AL, MS, MT, ect) that have students that want to go to schools outside the limited state schools, yet most of the time they can't afford them. Those students are pretty much stuck, which I think is really sad. </p>

<p>UVA data: <a href="http://www.web.virginia.edu/iaas/data_catalog/institutional/data_digest/enrl_city.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.web.virginia.edu/iaas/data_catalog/institutional/data_digest/enrl_city.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Nice Link!</p>

<p>Top schools in the South are probably good places to look for students coming from overrepresented states. Most of these schools would probably welcome more applicants from the Northeast and elsewhere and nearly all of these schools are competing more effectively for top students across the country. </p>

<p>Among top schools located in the South, Duke and Emory have strong reputations of taking a sizable number of students from the Northeast. Vanderbilt has been a bit of a latecomer in this, but has changed its patterns over the last decade and Northeasterns are now plentiful on their campus. Rice continues to have nearly half of its students from Texas and this is another place that top Northeasterners and others should definitely look at. Qualitatively, the student body at Rice is as good or better than every Ivy not named HYP. </p>

<p>Among the publics, U Virginia, U North Carolina and W&M all get tons of applications from the North and their OOS students tend to be stronger on average than their IS students, but their state obligations limit their numbers to 1/3 for the Virginia schools and 15-18% for NC. Admission to these schools is very competitive for OOS (probably below 30%), but I would guess that it is a bit easier for qualified, non-Northeastern applicants.</p>

<p>Where does the midwest fall in this context? I mean someone from michigan or illinois, how good are their chances in new england schools based only on their recs</p>

<p>South Florida if youre not hispanic.</p>

<p>what? And i'm not hispanic I'm a multiracial asian.</p>

<p>Definitely NJ, especially northern NJ.</p>

<p>Yeah, I'd say Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Hampshire, Delaware, Virginia, and Florida are in that order the worst states to be from, college admissions-wise.</p>

<p>Of course, I'm biased. I'm a white female from Connecticut :-)</p>

<p>Sorry for sounding dumb but does that mean i can get into colleges in NJ?</p>

<p>I know I'm biased, but I'd say that Northern Virginia and the rest of Virginia should be seperate categories, because they are really quite different.</p>

<p>what the heck? Can someone answer me?</p>

<p>Meh.. Asian male from New York suburbs ain't got no lovin'. Think my family would move to Wyoming? :P</p>

<p>Yes, mcqdeltat, you can get into college as a NJ student... you're just compared to a more impressive pool of applicants which means that's it's more difficult to get into college (particularly the top ones). </p>

<p>The way I figured things out as a caucasian female student from CT, for example, was that in order to consider a school a good fit, I had to have scores close to the 75% mark of accepted students. If it was lower than 75% but higher than the 35%mark the school was a semi-reach, and if it was lower than the 35% mark it was a reach.</p>

<p>thanks for clarifying littleathiest</p>

<p>but i'm from michigan</p>