<p>Pizzagirl, you may prefer to assume a uniform distribution, but just because you prefer it, doesn’t mean it exists.</p>
<p>Hunt, the irony is I could Ivy bash with the best of them. My preferred schools fall out of the Ivy’s, but that is for another discussion. To me it is more a question of statistics. My hunch is the uniform distribution is a bad assumption, and by using it unfairly biased the results against the schools in the NE. </p>
<p>“I’m scratching my head, wondering why people are so upset with the results that started off this thread. It seems to me that they show a pretty simple pattern strongly enough so that most of the concerns we’ve raised are mainly quibbles. All they show, I think, is that pretty much all selective colleges (except maybe MIT) draw more heavily from their home regions that many of us would have suspected before looking at the data. Does anybody really think that conclusion is “spurious?” I’m as sensitive to Ivy-bashing as anybody, and there has been a bit in this thread (and lots elsewhere), but I think it’s interesting to compare the extent to which different colleges draw students from all around the country. Examining that doesn’t necessarily say anything about how much colleges should value that kind of distribution.”</p>
<p>Thank you, Hunt. I think I’ve been extraordinarily clear in stating that these are observations, not prescriptions.</p>
<p>Hunt, Personally, I am sensitive to two things - Ivy bashing, and poor statistical analysis (having been trained in statistics in an Ivy). I am happy to note that the Ivy bashing has dropped once it was challenged. The poor statistics continues, but I am hopeful that it will change as well, and reason will prevail. </p>
<p>The only conclusion that can be drawn from the analysis is that on average kids go to school close to home. Which is common sense. </p>
<p>Here are a few numbers provided without interpretation about the population within 100, 500, and 1,000 miles of Stanford, WUSTL, and Harvard. The second column of numbers shows the population aged 15 to 17 that could be used as a proxy for the potential college students.</p>
<p>The numbers come from <a href=“http://mcdc.missouri.edu/websas/caps10c.html”>http://mcdc.missouri.edu/websas/caps10c.html</a> – It is an amazing site and shows that great things come out of Missouri! Check it out! :)</p>
<p>Stanford Population 15 to 17 Years
w/100 10,863,080 445,624
500 41,612,874 1,842,129
1000 65,278,604 2,846,191</p>
<p>WUSTL<br>
100 4,052,667 170,787
500 93,320,501 3,927,597
1000 202,368,535 8,449,715</p>
<p>Harvard<br>
100 10,490,461 423,074
500 69,550,558 2,850,343
1000 138,192,897 5,709,951</p>
<p>PS The following information about WUSTL is instructive:
Washington University’s 11,967 full-time students represent all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. There are also nearly 2,100 part-time students. Students and faculty come from more than 100 countries around the world. Approximately 90 percent of undergraduates come from outside Missouri; nearly 65 percent come from more than 500 miles away.</p>
<p>Im not upset at the results, but I’m not sure if you can interpret much from it. I don’t think this says much about how much ‘national’ drawing power a school has. </p>
<p>If we assume that kids will go to school within X distance of home, then a school that is located next to a lot of different ‘regions’ within that X distance will show a more a more ‘national’ distribution that a school that is far away from a number of different regions. That doesn’t suggest it has any more national drawing power.</p>
<p>To show that school Z is a stronger attracter than school Y, I think you’d have to show that School Z is more likely to overcome the inertia of going over X distance from home than school Y.</p>
<p>Much2learn:
WUSTL is getting very high scoring students who probably were not admitted to an Ivy, MIT, Stanford, Duke, or Cal Tech for various minor weaknesses. So what? That is really nothing to be frustrated about. They have a great student body and a beautiful campus.</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl “This is the provincialism at work, right here. It is completely unfathomable to some of you that there are real flesh and blood students who might want to attend WashU, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Emory, Vanderbilt, Rice, etc AS THEIR FIRST CHOICES, and not merely as “sloppy second backups” when they didn’t get into the Ivies, MIT or Stanford.”</p>
<p>First, it is not provincialism, since I live in the midwest. Perhaps, reverse provincialism? If it were correct. However, I am not saying that this is what should happen, I am just observing what is happening. </p>
<p>Second, I see that WUSTL accepts a significant number of students ED. Clearly these students do want to attend WUSTL over other schools so the assertion that it is only considered as a backup is not correct. However, even with a significant number of ED admits, WUSTL only has a 30% yield. That tells me that they are not able to win many cross-admits away from the tops schools and is largely considered a back-up by the best students in the regular admission round (which is still very impressive).</p>
<p>Third, I just helped my D work through her college search last year, and I can honestly say that a discussion about National versus Regional student bodies never came up. The focus was on the quality of the schools’ programs overall, quality of programs in her specific interest areas, availability of internship and job opportunities, her fit and comfort with the campus environment and the students, and relative cost. I think that the importance of a more national student body is way down on the list of issues that potential students and parents are concerned about. I will say that WUSTL did a better job of its marketing effort than any other school we were in contact with. </p>
<p>Finally, I would be happy to send one of my kids there if it were the right school for them. What I don’t understand is the view that for all that WUSTL has achieved, you feel like their position is very frustrating. </p>
<p>
But see, it isn’t common sense when we’re talking about Harvard. I was surprised by what percentage of Harvard’s students come from the Northeast–I thought it would be less than that. And my common sense, such as it is, told me that Wash U would be significantly more regional in this respect than Harvard. I’m less surprised by, say, Cornell or Dartmouth. To me, the most interesting thing about this is that those colleges outside the Northeast that have made the strongest efforts to attract students from out of region have succeeded in doing so. And I think most of us would say that there national “prestige” has increased over the last few decades as well. It’s not clear which is the cause and which is the effect, of course.</p>
<p>“When doing satistical analysis you do not “reward” distribution trends, you <em>analyze</em> distribution trends. If the distribution in the population is not uniform, and you force fit an uniform distribution in your analysis because you don’t want to “reward” cretain population segments that deviate from the uniform distribution, then your analysis will be wrong.”</p>
<p>My analysis assumes that the distribution of the population as a whole is likely similar to what I’d like to model - which is the distribution of the population of the elite-school-worthy.
Your analysis assumes that the distribution trend of the sum of those students who attend the top 20 private universities is similar to the distribution of the population of the elite-school-worthy.
The answer is likely somewhere in between the two. </p>
<p>Maybe it’s provincial on my part not to realize that the midwesterners and southerners are Dumb and Dumber.
On the other, maybe it’s provincial on your part to not acknowledge that the elite-private-school-attenders aren’t a representative microcosm of the elite-school-worthy crowd, but are skewed to the NE for reasons both historical and cultural.</p>
<p>I would have thought that when I pointed out that your analysis “requires” Stanford to have had a full 41% of its student body be from the Northeast in order to break even, that you would have said something. </p>
<p>“You are assuming an uniform distribution in the population which simply doesn’t exist. SES varies sharply by region and college admissions are more linked to SES than anything else.”</p>
<p>Fascinating, because half of College Confidential discussions are dedicated to the proposition that unqualified poor URM’s are stealing all the spots rightfully owned by well-to-do suburban white kids, but I digress. </p>
<p>I do not take this Princeton Review poll of 8219 applying seniors about their “Dream Schools” as a serious study due to its method of administration, but it does say something about the NATIONAL appeal of various schools. Also, what is interesting is the poll somewhat controls for several of the factors we’ve discussed that could dissuade or preclude elite school attendance out of region, namely cost, esp. for folks in lower SES areas; transportation expenses; and differences in regional smartness, including the perceived chances of being admitted to an elite school. The poll does this by asking college students: “What ‘dream college’ do you wish you could attend if acceptance or cost weren’t issues?” </p>
<p>Top Dream Schools:
<p>“For all the supposed johnny-come-lately status of WashU, it’s notable that they achieve a more national student body than ANY Ivy.”
“This result is not surprising considering the fact the WashU is almost adjacent to the mean center of the United States population (currently located at Laclede County, Missouri).”</p>
<p>“It’s a meaningless mean, though.”</p>
<p>Absolutely not.</p>
<p>“ Let’s say you restricted every college in the country to only admitting students who live with 300 miles (for the sake of argument). “</p>
<p>This statement is not true.</p>
<p>“There are enough people in the northeast metropolis that stretches from BOS to DC to fill many of those schools. There aren’t enough people within 300 miles of STL to do so.”</p>
<p>Also not true. </p>
<p>Chicago
Indianapolis
Louisville
Nashville
Memphis
Kansas City
Are all within 300 miles of WashU. </p>
<p>If one looks at the vector from Laclede County, Missouri to the location of a particular school and compares it to the vector from Laclede County to the mean center of population from the four regions then the results from post #1 can be predicted in most cases.</p>
<p>Is the assumption underlying all of these analyses of regionalism (however one measures it) that having a high-achieving student body from all over the US (and maybe the world) is more valuable than having a student body (high achieving or not) composed of people who are mostly from one region. My question is why is the national student body more valuable? I get that a college experience should open’s one’s mind to new ideas/points of view and certainly coming in contact with folks from other parts of the country/world who have diverse viewpoints and belief systems does do that. </p>
<p>Without access to socio-economic data on the makeup of the student body of elite schools, we can’t say anything about kids from these underrepresented regions except where they are from. It might be that many of the kids who come to these elites from under-represented regions are not much different in their world view/background from kids in the home region. For example, I think a student admitted to Harvard College from state of Georgia is more likely to be from Buckhead, Ansley Park, or Druid Hills than from Valdosta, Georgia. So–my question: is the national student body really going to affect a student if he/she is surrounded by kids from other geographic regions who have a very similar social/economic upbringing. Is that kid from Buckhead really any different from the kid from New Caanan, CT, of Westin, MA or Potomac, MD, Saddle River, NJ or any other affluent suburb in the “overrepresented” NE?</p>
<p>
How do you suppose NYU got to be third on this list? It would be interesting to see how many votes each college got out of the 8219 seniors. It could be that Stanford and Harvard got most of the votes, and the rest were also-rans.</p>
<p>“Perhaps they would just have said that it means WashU has higher proportion of midwestern students than other schools of the same/better calibre, or that WashU is in the midwest so the surrounding culture would be midwestern as well, and the discussion would have ended there instead of having to prove that WashU is more “national” than the Ivies.”</p>
<p>I didn’t set out “trying to prove” that WashU was more national than the Ivies. That’s just what popped out as I looked at the results. I am not linked to WashU in any way aside from having lived in St. Louis for 4 years, years ago. I have no family or loved ones in St. Louis, haven’t physically been there in at least 10 years, and have absolutely zero dog in any WashU fight. </p>
<p>Let me expand on Hunt’s theoretical question with a specific example.</p>
<p>Suppose a student comes on and says: “I’ve narrowed my selection to Northwestern and WashU, but within those two, I prefer the one that has a less midwestern student body.”</p>
<p>Leaving aside finances and strength in pre-med and theater and weather and living on the lake and blah-blah-blah, what would you <em>expect</em> the conventional CC wisdom to be <em>with respect to that particular question</em>?</p>
<p>“Chicago
Indianapolis
Louisville
Nashville
Memphis
Kansas City
Are all within 300 miles of WashU.”</p>
<p>So? What % of the entire US population is within 300 miles of St. Louis, and what % of the entire US population is within 300 miles of, say, NYC? (Clue: The latter will encompass Boston, NYC itself, Phila, Balt and Wash DC.)</p>
<p>Bromfield- I do agree that if diversity is merely adding Ladue, MO or Kenilworth, IL to New Canaan, CT, it’s not as valuable. But, it’s a start. It would seem to me that elite colleges would want to add both types of diversity. I don’t think they’re happy if all they do is get rich suburban kids from everywhere, and I don’t think they’re happy if they get only kids from their home region. The extent to which that’s important vs other institutional objectives, of course, may vary.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The population within 300 miles of STL is about 36 millions. </p>
<p>From those there are
15 to 17 Years 1,538,345<br>
18 to 19 Years 1,069,105<br>
20 to 24 Years 2,534,209 </p>
<p>However, extending the area by 200 miles is yielding much higher numbers:
Within 500 miles, the population is 93,320,501 with 3,927,597 aged 15 to 17 years old. </p>
<p>Adding 100 miles to the radius catches North Texas, and the figure jumps to 121,626,737 with well over 5 million students aged 15 to 17. </p>
<p>And what’s the corresponding # for, say, Columbia in NYC?</p>
<p>“But see, it isn’t common sense when we’re talking about Harvard. I was surprised by what percentage of Harvard’s students come from the Northeast–I thought it would be less than that.”</p>
<p>Why did you think that?</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl "Suppose a student comes on and says: “I’ve narrowed my selection to Northwestern and WashU, but within those two, I prefer the one that has a less midwestern student body.”</p>
<p>I just do not think that anyone says that. Is that really the key question for anyone? I think it is useful information, but only a small piece of the puzzle. </p>
<p>@Hunt "To me, the most interesting thing about this is that those colleges outside the Northeast that have made the strongest efforts to attract students from out of region have succeeded in doing so. And I think most of us would say that there national “prestige” has increased over the last few decades as well. It’s not clear which is the cause and which is the effect, of course.</p>
<p>I completely agree. This just appears to be factual information. I am still confused why either side in this discussion finds this upsetting.</p>
<p>With regard to cause and effect, I think they are interrelated. As you attract better students, your prestige increases, the higher prestige allows you to attract more better students, and the cycle continues. It is a positive spiral.</p>