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

Parents Forum
421

<p>Maybe. But, I think a part of the issue is the way the country has been divided up. I mean, in most things the south is broken up into southeast and southwest. Mid atlantic. Mountain West. West. Midwest. But, if you take Virginia (which even US News puts in the southern region) and Maryland out of the NE, and put the southwest in it’s own category, you’d get a very different PSAT number.</p>

<p>But, you wouldn’t really get a different regional makeup at the schools, imho, and I think a lot of states work very hard to keep their best and brightest near home, and they do this for good reason. The schools themselves, public or private, do have a regional investment, if only to keep the natives from attacking the tax exemptness of their institutions. The great land grant schools have a mission of educating their own, and more and more of the uppoer middle classes are attending the flagships, as the costs are raised</p>

<p>If we can learn anything, it will only be relevant for those who can afford to send their kids away, to begin with, and sending a kid across the country, or half way across the country, takes certain means. </p>

<p>No matter how you look at it, most kids don’t go that far from home to go to college. I think the idea of going very far from home for school is also an SES bias. And no matter how the schools reach out to get the bright kids from the lower SES, the ones who can afford to attend will probably be the ones whose family lives closer to the school. </p>

422

<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>

<p>Should it be an institutional priority? What would be the benefits of that? Let’s consider three cases:</p>

<p>Case 1. The Ivies as a group are no better in education quality than other options available to students outside of the NorthEast</p>

<p>In this case, no one is hurt because the Ivies are regional. </p>

<p>Case 2. The Ivies as a group are indeed better than other options available to students outside of the NorthEast</p>

<p>In this case, a case can be made that Ivies should attempt to attract equally qualified students as their current student bodies from other parts of the country. However, do we know that they do not do this already, and the resultant student composition is DESPITE that due to self-selection? For example, if we compare within the CHYMPS, if a West coast kid is good enough to get into HYMP, (s)he is likely good enough to get into CS as well. Where will the kid likely go? Stanford/CalTech, or Harvard/MIT? We need to take this self-selection bias into account. Since the analysis has not done that, I would posit that it is not very useful.</p>

<p>Case 3: Regardless of education quality, regional diversity in colleges is in general good</p>

<p>If that is the case, all state universities are inherently flawed in their mission, and all students attending their state university of choice is getting a subpar overall college experience. This is a big indictment which I personally do not agree with. Anyone wants to make this case?</p>

<p>In summary, as the 3 cases above show, the indignation at the Ivies being regional has to be accompanied by the core belief has to be that the Ivies as a group are better than other colleges in the country, just as the college rankings show. </p>

423

<p>re: post 412: National merit would work except not all kids even enter the competition. I’d wonder if the percentage of kids that even take the tests matched the percentages from the individual state of college bound students. Just population based, Mass. had over 48,000 kids take the test while Wisconsin had only 17,000 take it. Even if Wisconsin has 20% less students, or we had the ability to equalize the comparison I don’t believe it would overcome the vast numbers of kids in Mass. that took the test. To “prove” that there are more and smarter kids per capita in the NE you’d have to find some equalizing national test and that doesn’t exist either because of the split between SAT favored states and ACT favored states. Even the very smartest kids headed for UofM in our school might take a pass on he PSAT and SAT national merit route because they don’t need it and Michigan doesn’t put any of their own money into National merit scholarships. I think there are a number of measures that, if data were available, would prove out that there is no national university, no single “national test” or marker. </p>

424

<p>Exactly, Momofthreeboys. The PSAT is, itself, regional. </p>

<p>It’s a big country. It doesn’t divide out right, or even have one unifying standardized test. </p>

<p>@catalannumbers nobody is indignant at the Ivies being regional. Some people are just surprised that they are just as regional as all schools, given their continuous statements of national outreach. Also, there is a yearly ■■■■■ session among Northeastern students who feel they were ripped off by those from other regions and races and whatnot.</p>

425

<p>“But, you wouldn’t really get a different regional makeup at the schools,…”</p>

<p>I don’t know. If you stuff one region with as many of the best students as you can get away with, especially through bizarre and nonsensical boundaries, you may find that the best schools draw even more disproportionately from that region. </p>

426

<p>Sort of @notjoe But Virginia has some of the bar none top publics in this country, as I’m sure you are aware. They do an excellent job of keeping their best instate, imho. Nobody is rushing out of state from Virginia, and with good reason.</p>

427

<p>Poetgrl, Kids complain about so many things. As adults, we shouldn’t get agitated over it, I would think. As for Ivies having national outreach, perhaps you and I are defining outreach a little differently. Outreach doesn’t mean equal representation. Affirmative Action, for example, is a robust and viable outreach program, and I believe no one will claim that the best academic institutions in the country do not actively pursue AA. Yet URMs continue to be underrepresented, while certain other minority groups continue to be overrepresented. </p>

<p>It is hence important to understand the self-selection process. You can’t blame Harvard for not having enough kids from a far away state when the people in those states take great pride in their state flagship (as well they should) and prefer to go there instead of Harvard. Besides, since there are so many equally good schools in the rest of the country, no one is hurt by the Ivies being regional. That’s what we should all cherish, that the kids have equally viable options all over the country. Would you not agree with that?</p>

428

<p>Yes. Parents complain as well. Unless you are an old user registered with a new name, you don’t know. Just wait. you will see. </p>

<p>Also, read the thread. you are talking to the wrong person if you think I “blame” or even care about what Harvard does. </p>

429

<p>Poetgrl, apologies then. I thought you cared about the fact that Harvard is, after all their claims to the contray, still regionally focused; otherwise I wouldn’t understand why you would care enough to be surprised.</p>

430

<p>Is having a student population that matches the percentage of the overall population of the stated four regions ideal? I can’t imagine so. It’s pretty easy to see that a great percentage of applicants prefer their home region. Should a school ignore that pressure and in effect try to force applicants to seek out other regions? Why? Or should they look for students in all regions and pick them based on the many other important factors that they currently do?</p>

<p>If Harvard wanted to be the ideal “national” university with higher stats than they admit now, they could be that. But they choose the applicants they want for many, many reasons that are much more meaningful than where they are from. How important is losing a little regionality? Is becoming the “national” ideal more important than picking the oboe player, the math whiz, the point guard, the award-winning debater you want. </p>

<p>I think comparing the regionality of two peer schools from the same region can be interesting and has some meaning. But comparing Harvard and WUSTL this way is silly and means little.</p>

431

<p>Not really Harvard, per se. I’m interested in the US and the size of it, and I find this particular mindset interesting, as well, more from having been around here and watching and listening to the biases that are recurring in nature, year after year, inspite of the information out there. What is interesting about this thread, to me, is the fact that we now see in the numbers that these schools are just as regional as all schools. This is not earth shattering, but it is interesting, in that kind of inside baseball way.</p>

432

<p>Having a national and international student body is a stated mission these schools. And, so, they are failing that mission.</p>

433

<p>“Having a national and international student body is a stated mission these schools. And, so, they are failing that mission.”</p>

<p>Having a national and international student body doesn’t mean equal representation. Otherwise, all these schools would have to have 95% of their student population from outside the USA, as, after all, USA is only 5% of the world population. I doubt that’s what the schools meant when they said they want an international student body. The same applies to national as well. </p>

<p>For the record, Harvard has more than 10% international students, and less than 20% students from New England. I would say they are meeting their mission just fine. Adequate representation yes, but not equal representation. In short, let’s not be literal and take definitions to the extreme. It just makes arguments look foolish.</p>

<p>Regardless, since you do not care what these schools do (as you stated before), I fail to see why you are interpreting the mission statement of these schools and then judging them as failures.</p>

434

<p>“Sort of @notjoe But Virginia has some of the bar none top publics in this country, as I’m sure you are aware. They do an excellent job of keeping their best instate, imho. Nobody is rushing out of state from Virginia, and with good reason.”</p>

<p>Virginia has some great schools, but folks like Harvard get more than their fair share of their students. The year my older son was accepted there, I saw the list of students admitted from the Washington metropolitan region. The list was about double the size what it would have been if it had been proportional to population. Northern Virginia’s share was in keeping with the rest of the region. As well, we know teachers from locally-elite schools in Northern Virginia, and the top northeastern schools are what many students aim for. Also, Virginia schools are quite popular with Maryland students. For my older son, applying to UVa was a no-brainer. </p>

435

<p>No doubt, @notjoe. </p>

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<p>@Catalannumbers This is what we do on CC. It’s our inside baseball. We discuss colleges ad infinitum. If this bores you, or you find me tedius already after your ten posts, you can just put me on ignore and then you won’t have to see or hear from me ever again. </p>

<p>As someone who has lived in the NE, Midwest, West, and now South, I have some interest in discussing regional preferences and in noticing that schools many on this board claim to be national turn out to be just as regional as the rest. I’m not complaining, nor am I judging, nor have I set their stated mission for them, nor have I written or printed up their many marketing tools which state they are _______________. </p>

436

<p>Poetgrl, We can do that, or we can discuss if it is reasonable to interpret the mission statements of schools that claim to be international as requiring 95% of foreign students. </p>

437

<p>Yeah, ummmmmm, no.</p>

438

<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>

<p>Absolutely. I wish I had applicant data so I could construct an index of percent of applicants from a region divided by percent of the pop from that region. It would indeed be a better test of national attraction. But I only have what I have. </p>

439

<p>Poetgrl, assuming the abve means that it is not sensible to interpret the mission statement of a school claiming to be international as requiring 95% international students, why is it then sensible to interpret the mission statement of a school claiming to be national as requiring equal representation from all regions in the USA?</p>

<p>Or, assuming the above means that you are not interested in discussing your interpretation of the mission statements of these schools, which caused you to conclude that they are failing to meet them, I can bow out of the discussion.</p>

440

<p>“In summary, as the 3 cases above show, the indignation at the Ivies being regional has to be accompanied by the core belief has to be that the Ivies as a group are better than other colleges in the country, just as the college rankings show.”</p>

<p>No one is “indignant.” It is an observation that flies in the face of CC wisdom. That’s all. </p>