Ivy League Admissions Offices Are Setting Their Sights On Rural Students—Can City Dwellers Take Advantage Of Their Efforts?

For students and families across the country, embarking on the college journey can be a daunting process, both financially and emotionally. Not only does it require extensive financial planning for many families, but it also requires students to enter a new community and find their bearings as independent adults. However, for students and families in rural communities, the challenges of pursuing higher education are magnified. The rising cost of college, exacerbated by the distance of most rural communities from affordable postsecondary institutions, as well as the difficulty of adjusting to life in an urban or suburban center, can create significant barriers for rural students interested in higher education. Compounding these obstacles, admissions officers rarely prioritize visits to rural schools, due in part to the smaller number of students they would reach in these locations compared to urban or suburban locations.

But in light of the meager percentages of rural students enrolling in higher education, some Ivy League schools have begun to make concerted efforts to recruit students from rural areas.

In 2021, only 56% of students from rural public non-charter schools went on to attend college in the fall following their high school graduation, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. While this number mirrors the percentage of students from urban public non-charter schools enrolling in college immediately after graduation, the statistics of postsecondary education in rural areas indicate a greater divide between rural and urban populations—in 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service reported that only 21% of adults aged 25+ in rural areas held at least a Bachelor’s degree, compared to 35% of the same age demographic in urban communities. Notably, these numbers have increased exponentially over the years, as the need for higher education in prior decades was slim; many rural communities offered a wealth of opportunities in agriculture and mining that did not require postsecondary schooling. For example, in 1960, only 5% of adults in rural areas had received at least a Bachelor’s degree. However, with the rise in manufacturing and automation due to increased industrialization, these opportunities in agriculture and mining have diminished significantly, forcing many students in rural communities to consider other opportunities outside of their hometowns—many of which require postsecondary education.

Deterrents for rural families when considering college are primarily financial and geographical. A 2021 McKinsey study found a 22% higher poverty rate in rural areas compared to urban areas, as well as a 19% higher rate of food insecurity. Not only do these higher poverty rates prevent families from covering the cost of attendance, but they also render families unable to travel to colleges that may be great distances from their permanent homes—whether during the college admissions process or after a student has been admitted. While two-thirds of college undergraduates attend institutions within 25 miles of their home, this option is not available to many rural students in what researchers call “education deserts”—areas with limited or no access to public, broad-access colleges. A study conducted in 2019 reported that a staggering 10.1 million Americans live in these education deserts.

Due to the significant hurdles that rural students face in the college admissions process, many Ivy League admissions officers have increased their outreach efforts in rural areas and have even re-evaluated their internal strategies for assessing rural applicants—many of whom attend schools that do not offer AP classes or a similar nationally-recognized curriculum.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Brown University hosted a program that flew students from rural areas to Providence, Rhode Island, to learn more about the school’s programs; travel expenses were covered by the university, and invited students stayed for free in the school’s residence halls. While the pandemic temporarily halted in-person initiatives such as Brown’s, it also leveled the playing field for rural students in some unexpected ways—online resources including virtual campus tours and Q&A sessions have become ubiquitous, allowing students some personal interaction with the school, even if they are unable to visit in person. In addition, since the onset of the pandemic, many Ivy League schools have maintained test-optional policies, which have been shown to increase the diversity of both the applicant pool and enrolled students—in 2019, one year after becoming test-optional, the University of Chicago saw a 56% increase in rural student enrollment. Similarly, the number of rural and small-town applicants for Brown University’s Class of 2025 increased by 23% compared to the Class of 2024.

Of course, eliminating standardized testing requirements is not enough in itself to bring rural students to elite college campuses—much less keep them there—as many prestigious universities have recognized. One of the associate directors of undergraduate admissions at Yale University, Corinne Smith, has spearheaded admissions outreach programs specially geared toward students in rural areas, through both digital platforms (such as Zoom) and in-person initiatives (such as alumni or current student ambassadors and admissions representatives visiting rural communities). In addition to outreach programs, many elite universities have seen the emergence of student groups aimed at fostering a sense of belonging for rural students on campus, as well as connecting them with students on campus who have similar backgrounds. In recent years, the student organization Rural Students at Brown began implementing initiatives for new and current rural students on campus, while students at Columbia University founded the Rural Education and Healthcare Coalition, with similar aims of encouraging a more supportive environment for the diverse needs and intersectional identities of rural students.

However, as colleges seek geographical diversity on campus, some middle- and upper-class families in urban centers are considering the ways that they might increase their chances of admission by moving to rural areas. This is made possible in part by flaws in the systems that schools use to define rurality. As Corinne Smith notes in an interview with The Daily Yonder magazine, the majority of colleges and universities rely on categorization data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which determines rurality based on the location of a students’ high school rather than their primary residence. This means that students from upper-class urban-dwelling families who attend boarding schools in rural areas could be considered rural students on their college applications.

As universities seek to diversify their student bodies, there is a push to re-evaluate the means by which the unique identities of students are reflected in their applications and to ensure that applicants are regarded more holistically. In light of systematic flaws in the NCES system, for example, Corinne Smith began to read the application of each rural student in order to determine the student’s strengths and weaknesses and their preparedness to thrive at Yale. While many would like to believe that the college admissions process can be boiled down to one metric such as rurality, elite institutions evaluate students’ applications across a multitude of academic and non-academic factors. As such, colleges’ new initiatives aimed at rural students seek to ensure that urban, suburban, and rural students are evaluated on the basis of their own merit and the unique tapestry of their experiences, rather than being a single data point on a map.