<p>Hii!! so i live near upenn and a bunch of kids applied ed to upenn and five got in. I was thinking of applying regular decision. But i'm not so sure if I would have a good shot even though my stats are similar to them, will the fact that a decent amount of kids from my highschool already got in hurt me considering colleges consider geographic diversity? In addition another 35ish are applying rd as well. </p>
<p>If they took 5, then they can take 6. You have the opinion of the 35 other applicants in your class that its worth a shot. Give it your best - and if you don’t get in, you know not to take it personally.</p>
<p>Geographic diversity is really overstated as an effect at the elite universities. In fact, the “good neighbor” policy that many have actually seems to be a bigger effect (so, for instance, UPenn tends to give Philly area kids a boost in admissions while WashU seems to give StL area kids a boost in admissions, etc.). For example, while I don’t know how many UPenn accepted from each area, we know that more kids from PA matriculated at UPenn than kids from CA and TX, even though CA & TX added together have more than 5 times as many people as PA (a total of 423 PA kids in an entering class of 2425).</p>
<p>Furthermore, you’re not competing against kids from your HS, especially since they’re already in; you’re competing against kids in the whole country (or at least in the Philly area). It really does seem that kids pay too much attention to other in their school when they should worry more about the making their application as strong as possible.</p>