Interesting article. My wife grew up in rural Iowa and told me the same story. Nobody even applied to the elite east and west coast schools. If you were a great student you applied to the university of Iowa.

She also thinks that elite colleges undervalue the kind of extracirriculars common in rural areas: FFA, 4H, etc. When I was in HS, our extracirriculars were things like robotics club sponsored by the DOD. In a way, both are representative of their region (middle America versus inside the beltway).

I think ultimately its bad for diversity to take ECs into account. Too much cultural and social bias inherent in that. Think about the kind of ECs elite colleges like to see: concert pianist, interning at a research lab, community service, etc. Unless you have a real sob story, "work" is not very high on that list. But by and large people who can spend all summer on community service projects are not people who have to work as teenagers to help support themselves.