Kids at our school really end up all over although Mid-Atlantic and NE are probably most common. With that said, many go to the midwest and several go south as well (although anecdotally, I’d say that most of them have a connection with the south). The CCs really encourage them to cast their nets outside the Mid-Atlantic/NE area, in part because kids who need merit aid are more likely to find it if they’re adding geographic diversity to a college’s student body. Many of the students from Asia prefer to be on the west coast, and there are often a couple of kids with strong preferences for HBCUs. I’ve been grateful for the fact that at most of the schools where DS applied, there were probably no more than 2-3 other applicants from his class. (And the ones where there were tended to be schools that seem to like kids from his school, so it didn’t really amp up the competition.)
I think that for schools that have national recognition, location matters less in terms of jobs at graduation. For many of the very good schools that tend to have a more regional student body (and this includes schools in the NE as well), career placement services are much stronger in the region where the schools are. For students who are thinking about that part of a schools’ value proposition, staying in an area where you feel at home makes sense.