But I thought HYP were national universities! Why are ALL schools so regional??

Parents Forum
401

<p>“Hypothesis to Thesis. I read as much of this thread as I could and couldn’t find a point other than schools tend to have more people from nearby. What is the Thesis? That we don’t have any truly national schools.”</p>

<p>I stated my hypothesis early on. It had to do with the relative success of various top colleges in attracting a national student body. I wasn’t saying anything about quality.</p>

<p>" How about the military academies? " Asked and answered - I don’t have that data.</p>

<p>“Do you have numbers on where alumni of schools are? That would be another indicator of “national” schools.”
I don’t have that data. But I’m sure someone will argue that even if every single alumni of Harvard stayed in the metropolitan Boston area for the rest of his / her life, it’s still a “national school.” Whatever. </p>

402

<p>“When I was at Cornell, which has a high percentage of New Yorkers because three of its undergraduate schools are quasi public, I took statistics and learned that you can use them to support or attack just about anything you want to.”</p>

<p>What I find interesting is that they teach the same thing in the statistics classes at Fort Lewis College, Eastern Michigan, and even Northeast Alabama Community College among a few others.</p>

403

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<p>USC was known more for spoiled children until it started rising in ranks, both on US news and in football.</p>

<p><a href=“http://dailytrojan.com/2011/09/13/usc-ranks-in-top-10-among-rising-colleges/”>http://dailytrojan.com/2011/09/13/usc-ranks-in-top-10-among-rising-colleges/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

404

<p>Inherent in these discussions is that there was at one time the “natural order” of things (Ivies and maybe a few select others) and that if anyone else tries to rise in the rankings, it’s a suspicious and very bad thing, because who do they think they are. What has been, always will be. </p>

405

<p>“USC was known more for spoiled children until it started rising in ranks, both on US news and in football.”</p>

<p>Well, at least half of that is spot on. The academic side of the house has been on the rise since the mid-90’s and the school that was once a spoiled, rich kids school is now an impressive academic engine. The football side of the house has been prominent in college football winning 11 national championships dating back to 1928 and has seven players that were awarded Heisman Trophies. </p>

406

<p>National titles</p>

<p>1928 Howard Jones
1931 Howard Jones
1932 Howard Jones
1939 Howard Jones
1962 John McKay
1967 John McKay
1972 John McKay
1974 John McKay
1978 John Robinson
2003 Pete Carroll
2004 Pete Carroll</p>

<p>They were resting on their laurels for about quarter of a century between 78 and 03.</p>

407

<p>Re #403–No, PG, that isn’t true. If it were, there wouldn’t be more folks from out of region applying and attending WUSTL and it wouldn’t have the current rank it does. To the contrary, students from far away were open-minded enough see it as a very good school on an upward trend and embraced it. Some better informed cynics may think it’s posing a little, but the general population doesn’t care. Stanford, a mere child in historical terms compared to the Ivies, has nonetheless risen steadily in the rankings and reputation, outpacing Harvard in terms of being the top dream school of American students and in having the most competitive admission. Again, the college gurus might complain about its ties to industry or its big sports scene, but the general population was willing to make room for it in their national college hall of fame. But as blossom points out, that’s because there is objective quality there behind the growing reputation; the Univ. of Phoenix won’t be able to accomplish the same. </p>

408

<p>"Stanford, a mere child in historical terms compared to the Ivies, has nonetheless risen steadily in the rankings and reputation, outpacing Harvard in terms of being the top dream school of American students and in having the most competitive admission. "</p>

<p>Yes, I know that ensuring that Stanford outpaces Harvard is important to you. I’m more of the viewpoint that all of the schools mentioned in my first few posts (essentially the top 20 unis and LACs) are all great schools that offer lots of opportunities to any student fortunate enough to be able to attend them. I don’t have the strong need to parse teeny-tiny differences in rankings. </p>

409

<p>WUSTL puts a lot of effort into raising their ranking and marketing efforts because they have to.</p>

<p>It is the only way to get students with high SAT scores to attend. There is no way to get the quality of students they get just from Missouri. Most top schools are located near large populations of top students. Additionally, they have to deal with a very low yield.</p>

<p>If the Ivies, Stanford and MIT et al. did the same level of marketing, they would succeed in driving their admission rates even lower, and raising the currently ridiculous admissions completion to an even higher level.</p>

410

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<p>Is there a reason for the caustic answer? </p>

<p>There is nothing incongruous in recognizing how Stanford has become more selective and recognizing that the schools ranked in its vicinity or on the following page are all great schools. In fact, there are few reasons to limit it to the next 50 or 100 schools. Great schools is a loose term as many schools happen to be great for distinct groups of students. . </p>

<p>And, is there much difference between “having the strong need to parse teeny-tiny differences in rankings” and trying to reinvent the wheel by “realigning” schools according to some-kind of index of regional enrollment? Both are all about pins and angels! And biases! </p>

<p>What have we learned from the last 400 posts? Has anyone changed his or her mind? </p>

411

<p>We’ve learned that some colleges do a better job of attracting a national student body than others. Surprisingly, since they are leaders in so much else, the Ivies aren’t leaders on this dimension. Whether it’s an institutional priority for them, I don’t know. </p>

412

<p>xiggi, it’s not “some kind” of index. It’s simply percent of students from each census region divided by percent of pop from that same region. Data Analysis 101. </p>

413

<p>So one of the assumptions in the original post was that no region was ‘smarter’ than any other region. For what it’s worth, I tried to gauge ‘smartness’ by NM cutoff scores for region. Of course, like the original calculations, there are a number of assumptions here, such that these numbers reflect a similar representative group of college-bound students. I didn’t use, for example, ACT averages by state, because the scores for some states represent 100% of the high school graduates, whereas other scores represent less than 50% of high school graduates. I have no idea if the PSAT is done similarly.</p>

<p>Northeast: 217.6<br>
South 209.4
Midwest 209.6
West 211.9</p>

<p>Perhaps these numbers suggest why NE students take up the majority of seats at elite colleges. </p>

414

<p>"WUSTL puts a lot of effort into raising their ranking and marketing efforts because they have to.</p>

<p>It is the only way to get students with high SAT scores to attend. There is no way to get the quality of students they get just from Missouri. Most top schools are located near large populations of top students. "</p>

<p>So? I still don’t understand the objection. Other than “they’re being uppity.” </p>

415

<p>@skrlvr‌,</p>

<p>Further, this “analysis” has inexplicably put two southern (or, at best, mid-Atlantic) states into the northeast - Maryland and Virginia. Both of these states have relatively-high PSAT cutoffs (for 2015, Maryland is 221, Virginia is 219). This miscategorization makes the south look dumber than it actually is, and the northeast look smarter than it is actually is, thus exaggerating the differences that might accrue from differences between areas in academic merit, ability, and achievement. </p>

416

<p>@Pizzagirl “It’s illuminating that what I posted was intended to spark discussion of the job the various <em>colleges</em> did in attracting a national student body, and it so quickly got turned into what people in the different <em>regions</em> thought and didn’t thought.”</p>

<p>Well what did you expect when you yourself post:</p>

<p>Post #1 “because gosh all their neighbors have heard of the Ivies.”</p>

<p>Post #3 "Despite the trope that all the midwestern LACs are made up of local farm people, it’s interesting how Carleton, Grinnell……</p>

<p>Post #17 “But see, this is my point. It’s “surprising” to people on the east coast that everyone hasn’t heard of Brown. It’s not even remotely surprising to people who don’t live in the northeast. Everything is regional, but for some reason those on the east think that their region represents the US.”</p>

<p>Post #22" So why is it that a lot of CC folks seem to believe that the Ivies have this magical brand power that attracts everyone, everywhere, that everyone is dying to go to these schools, and that other top schools are the “sloppy seconds / also-rans”?</p>

<p>Post # 55 “Right. So why are some on here convinced that the Ivy name has magic dust everywhere, when it clearly doesn’t? Is it that they are untraveled or that they naively project what impresses their region of the country to everybody?”</p>

<p>What does any of that have to do with"the job colleges are doing in attracting a national student body?"</p>

<p>This thread is at post #414 so it seems the discussion was led that way pretty early on. You can veil “beating the same old drum” with all the data you want, but for me its still the same old message: the Ivies are not “all that”. Well, at least not in your neck of the woods. O.K. so thats a fair point of view and one many subscribe to. But when you then extrapolate that opinion into generalizations of people back east being "provincial"and “unsophisticated” because they supposedly take too much pride in their universities for your liking, it makes one question who is really provincial and unsophisticated. Sophisticated people have a great tolerance for opposing points of view. </p>

<p>I live in a “fly-over state” for 9 months out of the year but also spend a great deal of time in the Northeast. I honestly do not pick up on the biases that you say exist. My D is in the college process and is submitting applications in 9 states including Illinois, Texas and California. Most of her classmates at a very New England boarding school are doing likewise. A glance at her school’s Naviance data confirms that at least for this very NE group of kids they are “sophisticated” enough to see value in schools in every region of the U.S. and even abroad.</p>

417

<p>And DC for 2015 is the highest, tied with NJ at 224. DC is also classified as Northeast</p>

418

<p>Yes, I forgot about that.</p>

419

<p>Also, what if we found out that Harvard, Yale and Princeton drew the most applicants nationally, and each region was well represented according to the criteria that PG suggests, while applications to a school like Rice did not reflect well regionally. </p>

<p>Wouldn’t this be more of a ‘test’ to see if the Ivies had the ‘magic national-attracting dust’??? </p>

420

<p>I guess it would, but I’m not aware that such data exists.</p>