User fultaz asked: “I’m from New York, and I heard that it is easier to get into the Ivy League if you are from a state less competitive state like Maine. Do they really cap the number of people they accept from each state?”

It is true that the Ivy League is interested in garnering a distribution of students from all fifty states and, indeed, countries all around the world. However, these schools do not look at which state you come from as a factor in evaluation. There is no max number of students accepted from any particular state.

Admission officers look at application folders in random order for the states, territories, and countries that they represent. Thus, they will not simply go through one state at a time. You will not be directly evaluated against other students in your school one after the other, just as you will not be evaluated in a pile of students from the same state. You will be evaluated randomly against students from across the country. Thus, due to the structure of the Ivy League admission office evaluation process, it is not possible for accepted students to be limited, or given an advantage, per state.