How much does geographic diversity help?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s a drawback to come from large cities, big public high schools, high achieving minority groups etc. because there is more competition.

It is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So where would a DMV student find that an emphasis on geographic diversity works in their favor, or at least not against them? Hawaii? Alaska? Timbuktu?

All of those but what dmv kid with good grades wants to go to Alaska?

[Anonymous]

Some schools don’t care. Some do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So where would a DMV student find that an emphasis on geographic diversity works in their favor, or at least not against them? Hawaii? Alaska? Timbuktu?

All of those but what dmv kid with good grades wants to go to Alaska?

Timbuktu was an organized scholastic community that existed for centuries....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you live in rural Idaho but your kid goes to a fancy New England prep school, is your kid still considered to be from an underrepresented area?

No! I know this first hand. They are evaluated against their peers from that school assuming it’s a place multiple people apply.

There aren't multiple people applying to small SLACs from Idaho. It helps because every school wants to say they have students from all 50 states. The fact that the student from Montana went to Taft is irrelevant as long as they can claim a student from the state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you live in rural Idaho but your kid goes to a fancy New England prep school, is your kid still considered to be from an underrepresented area?

No! I know this first hand. They are evaluated against their peers from that school assuming it’s a place multiple people apply.

There aren't multiple people applying to small SLACs from Idaho. It helps because every school wants to say they have students from all 50 states. The fact that the student from Montana went to Taft is irrelevant as long as they can claim a student from the state.

Not the PP you're responding to, but you're wrong. Have you actually been in this situation, or had a child in this situation? You are competing against your classmates at Fancy Prep School. Did you see the posts previously in this thread about Harvard's opinion on students who aren't "really" from an underrepresented state, even if they grew up there, because they're not white? This is similar.

You also lose the advantage of having a lower cutoff for National Merit in Idaho (or whatever underrepresented state). I moved from a state with one of the lowest cutoff scores to Massachusetts for boarding school, which has the highest cutoff scores. And it's going to be a LOT harder to get good grades at Fancy Prep School. The elite SLACs aren't admitting the kid who struggled to be middle of the class at Taft, but they WOULD admit that same kid if they were valedictorian of some easy public high school in Idaho.

[Anonymous]

This is part of why we think both our kids got into reach schools in the Midwest.