<p>Yeah, the title says it all. What role does my state play in admission to selective schools?</p>
<p>very very slight. Top colleges would like to say they have a student from all 50 states. But that being said, if any given year, no great kid applies to Princeton from Wyoming, they won’t be losing sleep in NJ because they don’t admit a kid from Wyoming.</p>
<p>I think your state does play a role. Not a huge role, but its definitely a factor. One of my friends is applying to Harvard, Yale, Brown, Darthmouth, MIT, Tufts, and BC. We live in Massachusetts, and shes worried that being from MA and New England are going to work against her.</p>
<p>I think the fact is that schools tend to take a higher proportion of their student bodies from their geographic region. I have read Harvard’s Dean of Admissions state that they have a responsibility to educate people from Boston/Massachusetts/New England. Yes, these are national universities. But if you look at the composition of their accepted classes, you would conclude that there are proportionally fewer viable candidates (by a huge margin) from outside their home regions than you can reasonably believe. A few years ago I read that Harvard only accepted 10 students from my state of NC which would be 0.5% of the class when NC is >3% of the US population. My conclusion is that the schools in New England assume they will have a greater yield with more local students and don’t want to risk losing too many cross admits to Duke or the comparative bargain of UNC-CH.</p>