Most US college students go to a school within their geographical region.

It’s a comfort issue. They might want to feel they can go home for the weekend, occasionally or often. They or their parents might not want to incur the expense of a flight every time the student travels to and from school. But if you’re applying from another continent, you’re already committing to a big trip. Don’t limit yourself to considering only the narrow selection of colleges or universities of which you have already heard.

After my brother’s first year as an undergraduate at Harvard University, he and two cousins traveled by car in a large loop around the US. When they stopped one night at a campground in the Midwest, they met some young men who, while sitting around the fire, asked them, “Where do you go to school?” My brother said, “Harvard,” and our cousins, “Dartmouth.” While my brother was amused, our cousins were astonished and a little upset that their new acquaintances, students at their own state’s university, had never heard of Dartmouth. Dartmouth, like Harvard, is a member of the Ivy League, seven of the oldest, most prestigious universities in the US.

My point is that if you limit yourself only to schools of which you’ve heard, you’re going to miss out on many excellent options.

Even if you can name all the schools in the Ivy League, there are going to be excellent schools of which you’ve never heard. Are you interested in a technical school? There are lots of technical schools with outstanding reputations besides MIT. Are you a musician? Is the only US conservatory you know by name, Juilliard?

The big name schools have what we might colloquially call a gazillion applicants. If you’re flexible about considering other schools, and other locations, you’ll improve your odds of getting in.

Except for community colleges, few, if any, colleges or universities want students from only their area. Even state universities want students from out-of-state. Partly it’s because out-of-state students pay state universities higher tuition than in-state students. Partly it’s because schools seek diversity within the student body.

Diversity can come from many qualities: students’ interests and skills, ethnicity, socio-economic background, and from the area in which they grew up. If you’re applying from outside the US, whether you’re an American student who has spent years abroad, or the citizen of another country, you have at least one big strength in applying to US schools. You appeal to their admissions committees’ desire for diversity in the student body.