<p>What does racism, sexism, or being white have to do with Christianity?</p>
<p>“After years of reading posts on CC, I have to say that there certainly are plenty of people who think that the elite colleges in the northeast have more national prestige than elite colleges elsewhere (except maybe for Stanford), and are “better” in significant ways. I remember a conversation in which a kid was deciding between Princeton and a free ride scholarship at Duke. It was surprising how many people thought this was a no-brainer: Princeton, of course!”</p>
<p>Exactly! It’s the perspective that only HYP, or only the Ivies, have some absolute special magic dust that no one else can possibly come close to. As opposed to the perspective that Princeton and Duke are basically six of one, half a dozen of the other, and it comes down to personal preference (and in this case, money). </p>
<p>“Here’s my beef: if some of these students don’t want to work in Charlotte, preferring NYC or SF, people like you will say they are being small-minded and prejudiced. Yet when the majority of Southerners don’t want to move North even for school, that’s just them being family-oriented and sensible?”</p>
<p>Not me. I think that any kid who is interested in a banking job who gets a job in Charlotte should take it and run, and just grow up already if it’s not NYC, because Charlotte is hardly the boonies. I don’t know where my kids will wind up, and they certainly have their preferences, but I would not want them ruling out any region of the country that presents a good opportunity. I think that’s immature thinking when someone is in their twenties, without a family, and can go anywhere. </p>
<p>"We all end up provincial to some extent. Southerners just know that they are. NE people and West coast, to a large extent, believe they are not. "</p>
<p>Yes! That is exactly it. I can only say I’ve lived in the NE and Midwest, but that characterizes the mindset perfectly. “My region is my region” versus “My region is the natural default for the entire US.” </p>
<p>* What does racism, sexism, or being white have to do with Christianity?*</p>
<p>I was reacting to racism & sexism. ‘White’ and ‘religious fundamentalist’ I took to be bookends comparable to flannel shirt wearing, NASCAR watching. I don’t equate fundamentalism with Christianity. OTOH out in the country where I live, most identifying as fundamentalist will probably also identify as Christians. However, some identify as Christian but definitely not as fundamentalists.</p>
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<p>No, you misunderstand me. People are complaining that northeasterners–and presumably Californians, but they seem to be immune from these charges–don’t hold schools in other regions in the high regard they deserve, and think that <em>everyone</em> has heard of elite NE LACs. My point is that it has been made amply clear on CC that people in other regions don’t hold many schools in the NE in the high regard they deserve, and in fact have argued that attending them is a waste of money because “no one” will have heard of them when it comes time to get a job. It goes both ways. </p>
<p>I am NOT projecting my experience on the rest of the country. I am FULLY aware that many people in other regions haven’t heard about and don’t spare a moment’s thought to many excellent schools in my region.( And to LACs anywhere, in many cases. I doubt that my H’s relatives in Michigan have even heard of Carleton, much less Pomona or Haverford, although a couple generations of the family went to Kalamazoo and they know of Hope. I also doubt that they have any particular knowledge of Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, and Rice, just to name a few.)</p>
<p>Now, my BIL’s family, from Chicago, are all Harvard/Barnard/UofC types. It is, as you say, partly a matter of class. People of a certain type everywhere in the country are aware of elite LACs and a variety of universities beyond the big sports schools. I can assure you, Maine is full of people who haven’t heard of Williams.</p>
<p>But what does that matter?</p>
<p>We also cannot ignore history. The northeastern prestigious universities were among the very first schools founded in the United States, and were attended by the social elites of the day. These schools, therefore, produced the leaders and thinkers of the early Republic. They simply have more years of academic achievement and history under their belt than schools in other regions, through no fault of the latter but it is what it is. More importantly, they continue to provide a superior education, as evidenced by their high position in various college ranking systems. Consider the eastern dominance in the current US News rankings entitled “NATIONAL Universities”:</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Columbia / Stanford / Univ. of Chicago</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>UPenn / Duke</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>JHU
13 Northwestern</li>
<li>Washington University SL</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
</ol>
<p>53 University of Texas at Austin</p>
<p>The NE is being unfairly characterized as hyper regional in thinking due to ignorance and unsophistication. We can dispute ratings, but in the end they’re what we’ve got to work with and are a better assessment of school quality than just our own regional opinions. And Brown shares #16 with ND and Vandy by the way, so not too shabby on national scale. </p>
<p>It only matters as a point of conversation with parents who think finding a colleges requires a national search, to parents who think they or their children have “failed” if they don’t attend a top 10 uni or college and presume that those unis will open doors from coast to coast, and helpful posters who “push” NE colleges on parents who come specifically to this forum and ask for midwest colleges (or southern colleges or western colleges) or somehow indicate what region they live in…something that happens with regular frequency. People will toss out Hartwick or some other lower ranking NE school to people who live within hours of Coe - a much high ranked college in the poster’s region. Never mind the kids who think they have to travel completely across the country South to North or East to West with no real reason for the need. So sometimes there’s simply no logic displayed on these forums.</p>
<p>If logic becomes a requirement here, I’m going to have to stop posting.</p>
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<p>we, many of us, are on here giving examples of regional thinking in other areas of the country.</p>
<p>Why be so defensive that the NE suffers the same? Nobody is claiming ANY area in the country lacks provincialism. Why does it bother you if your region has the same bias? Why is that a criticism of YOU but an observation about the rest of the country? </p>
<p>Just the fact that you take it as a crit. is a sign you don’t believe your provincialism is “quite the same.” </p>
<p>“we’re all mad here”</p>
<p>Summing up the NE argument for the TL;DR crowd: We’re not provincial. We really ARE that much better than you. </p>
<p>Thank you SOG. Sometimes I forget my English to English translation.</p>
<p>It just occurred to me that this thread could have been titled “Why Is ALL Cuisine So Regional?” and, apart from the names, 90-100% of any post would still make sense. French cuisine pretends to be the pinnacle of global cuisine, but French people still eat it a lot more than anyone else, and some people barely eat it at all. Maybe Chinese cuisine is better? Many Asians eat it, and so do lots of people (not so much the French).</p>
<p>A couple of us already took a side trek into “best” cuisine off board into private messages because we didn’t want to hurt the rest of y’all’s feelings.</p>
<p>I want to give a brief opinion on what a “redneck” is, having grown up in a part of the south where this term was in common usage while I was growing up. It is certainly true that all rednecks are white, but they aren’t necessarily racist, sexist, or fundamentalist. (Indeed, since they are typically beer-drinking good ole boys, they probably aren’t really all that fundamentalist). What really characterizes a “redneck” is being from a blue-collar family in a rural or small-town environment. Where I grew up, people who lived in the “city” weren’t rednecks, while people who lived in the “county” were. Note that the city only had about 20,000 people. Probably a lot of those rednecks were sexists and racists, but so were a lot of the city people. That wasn’t what made the distinction. It was more like what kind of car you drove, what kind of house you lived in, and what kind of music you listened to. In other words, where I grew up, “redneck” was a pejorative term, similar to “hick” or “hayseed,” but without the agricultural implication. It was sort of like “nekulturny” or “chav,” perhaps. Like a lot of other pejorative terms, it’s been adopted by some people (most notably, as indicated above, Jeff Foxworthy).</p>
<p>Yes, poetgrl, you are correct. I don’t think our regional bias is quite the same because many different objective ranking systems place the schools we think are good at the top of their lists. Thus at least our regional bias is based on some facts and not just our opinions or some regional blindness that says “There’s a school nearby that everyone I know goes to, so it must be really good.” </p>
<p>World University Rankings (Times Higher Education)
2. Harvard
4. Stanford
5 MIT
6. Princeton
11. Yale
13. Columbia
15. JHU
16. Penn
17. Duke
18. Univ of Michigan
19… Cornell</p>
<p>I appreciate your definition of a redneck Hunt. It is fair and without bigotry towards that class of folk. It seems that the contempt for certain classes of people can be used as an analogy for the contempt being bandied about around here in regards to geographic stereotypes of people and attitudes toward schools. People are more comfortable with people that remind them of themselves.</p>
<p>Again, I find the original stats interesting, yet certainly not surprising. So we have determined that students are more likely to go to school within the region of the country that they grew up in. I believe Buffy the Vampire Slayer said it best: “Does the word “duh” mean anything to you?” </p>
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<p>Or liking the Lacrosse scene :)</p>
<p>"So we have determined that students are more likely to go to school within the region of the country that they grew up in. I believe Buffy the Vampire Slayer said it best: “Does the word “duh” mean anything to you?” "</p>
<p>An earlier poster, @bp001, had thought that NE’erners were actually MORE likely to have left their home region when surprise! They are the least likely to leave their home region. But they also occupy proportionately more seats in elite schools, and those seats are disproportionately located in the NE. </p>