Not necessarily. I'm not a Texan. I interviewed at two Texas places. They certainly seemed rather skeptical in interviews as Texans don't seem to comprehend the fact that in the rest of the country people move states quite often.
In any case, most our program is from Texas. I'm the only person in my class not from Texas. This year we ended up matching our top 5. Only 1 is from Texas. A big part is being known to the program. A lot of the conventional wisdom doesn't hold true, at least with our program. For instance, I was quite interested in UTMB. Conventional wisdom says audition rotation doesn't matter, so I never did one. Not having a connection to the area and being an average guy, why would they interview me (they didn't)? However, the same could be said about the two programs in Texas that I did interview at.
Bottom line: if you're interested enough in a place that you've got specific reasons why you'd really want to go there, you may want to consider rotating there so they know who you are. Everyone says it probably won't affect your chances but that's bull****. That may be true at the standard 20 programs that everyone talks about, but certainly not at more middle-of-the-road places.
