Hello,
I am a high school junior from Oregon and am applying to college next year. Almost all of the colleges I will be applying to will be East coast (Holy Cross, Trinity, NYU) and I understand that bigger renown schools like NYU and Georgetown get applicants from everywhere but at the liberal arts colleges does being from the Pacific Northwest help my chances? Do the liberal arts colleges want geographical diversity?
Yes, I would guess most LACs do want a diverse campus and do consider geographical diversity. You can look up this information by googling [school name] common data set. Section C7 lists “Basis for Selection” and geographical diversity is one of the factors.
For example, both Vassar’s and Williams’s common data set says geographical residence is “considered”
http://institutionalresearch.vassar.edu/data/2015-2016/
http://provost.williams.edu/institutional-research/
I’m not sure how much the Pacific Northwest would help specifically. You should look up the % of students coming from each state/region for the LACs you are interested in and judge for yourself.
It’s a tiny bit helpful, but not super helpful. While doing colleges searching and visiting for my D ( we live on the east coast,) we always met kids from Oregon and Washington. But if there are two equally qualified kids, and they need a kid from Oregon and not another kid from NY, it might swing things in your favor, but don’t really factor it in. If you were from the Dakotas or Alaska, it could be a hook almost.
It won’t make up for a deficiency in your application, but it could tip the scales in your favor with all else being equal. At all the selective schools, there are more qualified applicants than there are spots, so a tip can be helpful, and most schools want diversity of all sorts, including geographic location.