Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Possibly! Some colleges make a concerted effort to have regional or state representation on their campus.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Possibly! Some colleges make a concerted effort to have regional or state representation on their campus.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Your hometown may improve, diminish or have little effect on your prospects for admission. It depends upon where you live and to which institutions you apply. A number of public colleges and universities give preference to in-state students, so for example, if you are a resident of North Carolina and seeking admission at UNC Chapel Hill, you are likely to have better odds of earning admission than a student with similar credentials who lives in Florida. In contrast, a number of selective private institutions seek geographic diversity and may give a slight edge to someone living far away or in a less populated region of the country. For instance, Columbia may accept a student from Billings, Montana over a student residing in Newark, New Jersey, all else being equal. Finally, in other cases, your hometown may play little role in an admissions decision.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

It definitely could! If you are looking at a school far away they may be more likely to accept someone from a town in a state they normally don’t get many applicants from. Adversely if a ton of students from your town apply to the school it might be harder to get in. Its not really the TOWN that makes the difference as much as the SCHOOL though. Colleges are comparing you with other students from the school you attended, which is not necessarily the same thing.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Your hometown may improve, diminish or have little effect on your prospects for admission. It depends upon where you live and to which institutions you apply. A number of public colleges and universities give preference to in-state students, so for example, if you are a resident of North Carolina and seeking admission at UNC Chapel Hill, you are likely to have better odds of earning admission than a student with similar credentials who lives in Florida. In contrast, a number of selective private institutions seek geographic diversity and may give a slight edge to someone living far away or in a less populated region of the country. For instance, Columbia may accept a student from Billings, Montana over a student residing in Newark, New Jersey, all else being equal. Finally, in other cases, your hometown may play little role in the admissions decision.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Hometowns (or states) affect admission to state universities because you are considered a resident, and tuition is less than for out of state students. Other than that, it’s not a benefit to live where the college is located.

Hometown

There is no simple answer to the question of whether a hometown could affect a student’s chances of admission, but the state of residency certainly does. There are some private colleges which allot a certain number of spaces to its own state; Brown does that for Rhode Island residents, and many state schools establish quotas that clearly favor their own. Conversely, there are colleges which favor geographic diversity. I can say with certainty that here in the Northeast, admission can be mighty tough because of the great numbers of qualified students. Sometimes they do better by applying at a distance. There are also particular schools which have a good reputation with admissions officers (e.g., a magnet school in an inner city) and that could be a competitive advantage. Yet that is the school, not really the hometown.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Short Answer:

Seasoned admissions officers who have spent years working at colleges in the same state will know your hometown and/or high school fairly well. However, this can cause them to prejudge your application. Detailed Answer: There is a great deal of prejudice in college admissions – as many different attitudes as there are counselors — so the fact that an admissions officer knows your school can work both for or against you. Hometown and/or high schools that are in socioeconomically challenged areas are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to college admissions. Counselors who have personal prejudices against certain ethnicities or economic backgrounds will lean toward not admitting students from those hometown and/or high schools. I remember a student from a high school in Jersey City, a famously poor, urban, multi-ethnic area. Her academic record was straight As in a strong academic program. She had maxed out everything she could take. She was Valedictorian. However, her hometown and/or high school did not offer SAT prep courses, and clearly her family could not afford to pay for individual coaching. Her combined SAT verbal and math score was 900, well below minimum admissibility. I pushed her file up the line and said to the associate director, “YOU be the one who can’t sleep at night for denying this student.” Eventually we admitted her, but the discussions about it revealed the deeply held prejudices of individual staff members. Conversely, students from high income communities are expected to have benefited from all the privileges and advantages afforded to their high school students. This can make it difficult for a student whose academic record is weak. The assumption is that the student is either 1) too dumb to make it at the college, or 2) lazy. The fact is that any number of issues can play into the failure of a student’s academic record. These factors can make it difficult to see the student’s real talent – hidden traumas, family or personal illnesses, divorce, abuse, romantic disappointments, late-blooming maturity, etc. The counselor may assume that the student had all the advantages in the world, so there must be something wrong with this student to not have achieved at a level similar to his/her peers. The bottom line is this: Admissions counselors that know your high school and community may base their opinion of YOU on past students who have applied from your school – which has very little to do with who you are or who you will be. A final story: At the NACAC conference this past September, the Princeton rep on the College Interview seminar panel blurted out that Princeton simply “never takes students from West Virginia.” Then she stumbled all over herself trying to take back her words. It would have been funny had it not been so smug and disturbing. Talk about your entire home STATE working against you…

Yes it does for sure

students should consider hometown first especially highly selective colleges.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Geography can pay a role in college admissions. Colleges are looking for diversity on many fronts including where you are from in the world. I would doubt that it gets down to the town you live but which state or country is taken into consideration.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Yes it matters. Most colleges will view your application in context and where you have lived is a big part of that context. It can make it much more difficult or less difficult to be accepted at certain schools.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Quiet as it is kept, diversity is more than race. If one derives from a small town, or place off the beaten track, it may impact your admission decision. Keep in mind that this includes the assumption that you’ve evidenced stellar achievement academically and otherwise. In discussions with students, I often cite the “big fish, small pond” example as a way to bring positive attention to your gifts. At the same time, those whose origin includes communities known for less than positive characteristics, may similarly be impacted.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

While your hometown shouldn’t make a difference, your school can. Colleges establish relationships with particular schools and know what it means to graduate from XYZ high school. They may recruit more heavily or less from yor school based on the reputation of the school. If your school has a favorable relationship with a particular college make sure you pay a visit when the admissions officer is in town.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Short Answer:

Seasoned admissions officers who have spent years working at colleges in the same state will know your hometown and/or high school fairly well. However, this can cause them to prejudge your application. Detailed Answer: There is a great deal of prejudice in college admissions – as many different attitudes as there are counselors — so the fact that an admissions officer knows your school can work both for or against you. Hometown and/or high schools that are in socioeconomically challenged areas are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to college admissions. Counselors who have personal prejudices against certain ethnicities or economic backgrounds will lean toward not admitting students from those hometown and/or high schools. I remember a student from a high school in Jersey City, a famously poor, urban, multi-ethnic area. Her academic record was straight As in a strong academic program. She had maxed out everything she could take. She was Valedictorian. However, her hometown and/or high school did not offer SAT prep courses, and clearly her family could not afford to pay for individual coaching. Her combined SAT verbal and math score was 900, well below minimum admissibility. I pushed her file up the line and said to the associate director, “YOU be the one who can’t sleep at night for denying this student.” Eventually we admitted her, but the discussions about it revealed the deeply held prejudices of individual staff members. Conversely, students from high income communities are expected to have benefited from all the privileges and advantages afforded to their high school students. This can make it difficult for a student whose academic record is weak. The assumption is that the student is either 1) too dumb to make it at the college, or 2) lazy. The fact is that any number of issues can play into the failure of a student’s academic record. These factors can make it difficult to see the student’s real talent – hidden traumas, family or personal illnesses, divorce, abuse, romantic disappointments, late-blooming maturity, etc. The counselor may assume that the student had all the advantages in the world, so there must be something wrong with this student to not have achieved at a level similar to his/her peers. The bottom line is this: Admissions counselors that know your high school and community may base their opinion of YOU on past students who have applied from your school – which has very little to do with who you are or who you will be. A final story: At the NACAC conference this past September, the Princeton rep on the College Interview seminar panel blurted out that Princeton simply “never takes students from West Virginia.” Then she stumbled all over herself trying to take back her words. It would have been funny had it not been so smug and disturbing. Talk about your entire home STATE working against you…

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

It may. This question really speaks to how admissions offices do their best to build a class with plenty of geographic diversity representing urban, suburban and rural areas from all corners of the country and for that matter, the world. A small liberal arts college in rural Vermont may get excited to get applications from urban areas in warm climates. Along those same lines, applying to Rice University as a Texan may be more difficult than it is for a student from rural Vermont. All that said, this question is far less important than whether you are a competitive student academically and personally within the context of the applicant pool of the university to which you are applying. Where you’re from won’t save you if your profile isn’t dynamic.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

I think that your geographic location can have some effect on college admissions in two instances: 1. some public universities: in California, we have the University of California system and the Cal State University system. Like many public university systems, the UC system gives priority to in-state residents. However, more and more out-of-state students are being admitted in light of their ability to pay higher tuition to cash-strapped UCs. With regards to the Cal State system — admissions is extremely localized. By that I mean that preference (and for some campuses like CSU Long Beach and CSU San Diego — heavy preference) is given to students who live in the immediate vicinity of the campus.

2. extremely selective schools: some highly selective schools consider geographic diversity an important factor in compiling a “well-rounded” class. For that reason, admissions decisions may include a consideration of an applicant’s hometown or home state. If you are from North Carolina or Alaska, you might have experiences and perspectives that are different and unique. That sort of diversity is valued by many schools.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Yes! Your hometown could help or hurt you depending on where you are applying. Let’s look at few (made up) examples.

Example One: You live in San Diego, CA and you want to attend your parent’s college- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Sadly, UNC takes very few out of state students. In this case, your hometown is likely going to make getting admitted much more challenging. Example Two: You live in Little Rock, AK and you want to attend Franklin and Marshall. You may have a geographic advantage over students from the east coast and middle atlantic states. The reason for this is that Franklin and Marshall wants to boast that they are a geographically diverse college and they may not get a large number of students from Little Rock. Example Three: You live in Scarsdale, NY and you want to attend University of California, Berkeley. If you can afford out of state tuition, you may have a slight advantage over CA students as CA has increased the percentage of students it accepts from out of state to increase revenue. I think you can see that your geographic location, can be a positive or a negative depending on where you live and where you want to attend college.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Yes it does as it affects your financial aid requirements.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Yes where you live can affect your chances of getting into a particular university. Colleges are looking for geographic diversity each year for their incoming freshman class, and look forward to offering enrollment to students who represent a different part of the country or international location to create an interesting and relevant dynamic in their classrooms.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Your hometown should not have a direct effect on your chances of getting into a college. However, certain colleges are interested in having a geographically diverse student body and the state or country where you live can have an effect on your admissions chances. In addition, it is generally easier to be admitted to a public university if you are an in-state applicant.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

It can in the same way that your background, your interests, and your co-curricular record can impact the ultimate decision because they are all a part of who you are and in the end that is what is being reviewed by the admissions office. Remember in the end the admissions process is about the school trying to create a community and all of who and what you are play a part in their deciding who best fits that goals. Schools want to assemble a class that is widely representative of the community from which they are drawing to make their own, and so there are things that they will look for, things like what state an applicant is from, the activities they will participate in, etc. In general no one thing will make or break it—although certain specific talents—an all-American point guard for instance–may trump more widely held attributes. The best you can do is present an application that gives the admission offices as full a picture of who you are and what –at any number of levels—you can contribute to their community. The ultimate decision is theirs, one that often says far more about them than about you.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

No, it really doesn’t. Colleges want good students from everywhere – a mix of students from all kinds of places.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

– If you are applying to a state school, this may well be the case. Many of them have quotas for each county, since they use government funding and are required to provide education evenly to the entire state. However, these quotas are carefully calculated so that if you come from a large town the quota is larger. Schools have some play with these quotas so that they don’t have to turn down an exceptional student because of a quota, but they do provide rough guidelines. However, it’s not something you can easily change, and hometown is not the most important factor by a long shot, so it’s not worth worrying about. – Private schools with heavily national draws (think ivy league) may well have quotas too to ensure they get a diverse student body. However, they will never admit to them or disclose their admissions process, so again, it is not worth worrying about!

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Your hometown could impact your chances of getting in, both positively and negatively. If you are from an area that is underrepresented at the college, you may be pursued by the institution because they want the geographic diversity you would supply to their stats. Conversely, if your high school or surrounding high schools tend to see a lot of students applying to the same colleges, your chances decrease. Universities want a variety of students in their classes, so they won’t automatically take every student who applies from the same area. In this case, you are not only competing against the applicant pool as a whole, but against your current classmates as well.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

Your hometown could impact your chances of getting in, both positively and negatively. If you are from an area that is underrepresented at the college, you may be pursued by the institution because they want the geographic diversity you would supply to their stats. Conversely, if your high school or surrounding high schools tend to see a lot of students applying to the same colleges, your chances decrease. Universities want a variety of students in their classes, so they won’t automatically take every student who applies from the same area. In this case, you are not only competing against the applicant pool as a whole, but against your current classmates as well.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

It could, but just because you were born in Sarajevo or Kalimantan won’t assure it. There are just too many variables to answer this question absolutely.

Does your hometown have any effect on your chances of getting in?

It could, but just because you were born in Sarajevo or Kalimantan won’t assure it. There are just too many variables to answer this question definitively .