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

Parents Forum
601

<p>Pizzagirl, I am combining several responses into one post.</p>

<p>You said: “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>My response: Let’s find that out then. You have student enrollment data for top-30 US News schools, as well as share by region for these schools. It is just a simple calculation after that. I will do it for you if you share your data with me.</p>

<p>You said: “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>My response: I am not the one who thinks schools have to proportionately represent kids from all regions.</p>

<p>You said: “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>My response: I am not sure I understand how that relates to this discussion. I personally believe that getting poor URMs into elite colleges is a worthwhile goal. In fact, I believe that it is a far more important goal than the spurious equal representation by kids from all states.</p>

<p>You said: "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>My response: I don’t know. I am new to CC. Personally I would ask the student to go to the web sites of the two schools, download admissions stats, and figure it out for him/herself. Someone who can get into either one of these two have the math ability to do this simple grade-7 level calculation. If they can’t, then perhaps the schools made a mistake in admitting them.</p>

<p>You said: " 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."</p>

<p>My response: And they don’t. For Harvard, a full 83% of kids is outside the home region (New England). Can we drop this strawman please?</p>

602

<p>NYU is very popular where I live, but I don’t get the sense students know much more about it than “it’s in the city,” but to them the city is cool place with lots of bars, clubs and concerts.</p>

603

<p>300 miles from Harlem, NY = 63,978,697 and 15 to 17 Years 2,626,828 </p>

<p>500 miles away 83,605,517 and
15 to 17 Years 3,421,075 4.1<br>
18 to 19 Years 2,442,771 2.9<br>
20 to 24 Years 5,782,662 6.9 </p>

604

<p>“NYU is very popular where I live, but I don’t get the sense students know much more about it than “it’s in the city,” but to them the city is cool place with lots of bars, clubs and concerts.”</p>

<p>Spot on. This is precisely what people also mean when they say WashU is “too midwestern”. It is in St. Louis.</p>

605

<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>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>No one said it had to be the key question. But let’s say it’s A question, that the student deems to be useful information.</p>

606

<p>"
My response: Let’s find that out then. You have student enrollment data for top-30 US News schools, as well as share by region for these schools. It is just a simple calculation after that. I will do it for you if you share your data with me."</p>

<p>PM me an email address, and I’ll set up a yahoo or similar email and send it to you.</p>

607

<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>Not Hunt, but I, too, was surprised by how high Harvard was against the northeast. My train of thought would have been: The better and richer a university’s resources, the more it has the ability to recruit, attract and support students from all over the country. I did expect <em>some</em> Northeast skew, simply because of the whole other-regions-siphon-off-top-students-to-state-flagships, and of course the cost / impact of travel, but I was surprised it was as high as it was. </p>

608

<p>“My train of thought would have been: The better and richer a university’s resources, the more it has the ability to recruit, attract and support students from all over the country. I did expect <em>some</em> Northeast skew, simply because of the whole other-regions-siphon-off-top-students-to-state-flagships, and of course the cost / impact of travel, but I was surprised it was as high as it was.”</p>

<p>So you started off with the assumption that a proportional representation of students across the country is one of Harvard’s key goals.</p>

<p>Which, as you found out, is wrong. This is why assumptions are critical. You start with a wrong assumption and you reach a wrong conclusion. Similarly, if you make the wrong assumption that top national students are uniformly distributed by state, you would reach some dead-wrong conclusions, as you did.</p>

609

<p>“So you started off with the assumption that a proportional representation of students across the country is one of Harvard’s key goals.”</p>

<p>No, please don’t put words in my mouth. I NEVER said that I started out with the assumption that proportional representation was, is currently, or should be one of Harvard’s key goals. I looked at data that showed a regional skew and I expressed a little bit of surprise because it was more regional than I had anticipated. </p>

<p>I have made it ABUNDANTLY clear in numerous posts that I am not prescribing what Harvard “ought to” do, so I would really appreciate it if that would be respected. They needn’t get my approval on their institutional priorities.</p>

610

<p>“I NEVER said that I started out with the assumption that proportional representation was, is currently, or should be one of Harvard’s key goals.”</p>

<p>Then why are you surprised that the representation, after all, is not proportional? That’s the part I don’t get.</p>

611

<h1>607 *Similarly, if you make the wrong assumption that top national students are uniformly distributed by state, you would reach some dead-wrong conclusions, as you did. *</h1>

<p>I have been thinking about this idea since the thread first began and was waiting for someone to point out PSAT/National Merit cut-offs vary by state. I find it difficult to believe there is a concentration of “most intelligent adolescents” in certain geographic areas, but easy to believe there are more “top national students” in areas where creating that sort of profile is encouraged. It is easy (for me) to believe kids raised in the NE try to give northeastern schools what those schools tell them they want. Beyond that, it is easy (for me) to believe certain social groups, in other geographic areas, will understand the student profile necessary for those schools. When ambitious kids have internet access, it seems to me everything changes. I shudder to think of some 12 year olds reading this board.</p>

<p>sorry for the off topic interruption.</p>

612

<p>“I NEVER said that I started out with the assumption that proportional representation was, is currently, or should be one of Harvard’s key goals.”</p>

<p>Then why are you surprised that the representation, after all, is not proportional? That’s the part I don’t get."</p>

<p>Because I would have thought they would have spent SOME effort at it. Not that it would have been a KEY goal, or one that would override other priorities they have, but it might have been A goal. </p>

<p>The same way I’d be surprised if (hypothetically)I were to find that, for example, only 1% of Harvard students were African-American. If I were to read that, I don’t necessary have to think “my, attracting a high % of Afr-Am students should be Harvard’s key goal and the #1 determining factor in what makes a good college” to think “my, that surely is lower than I would have otherwise thought, given a school of that caliber and resources.”</p>

<p>Maybe they know this and they spend a lot of effort at it, but they just can’t get those far-away kids to apply. Or maybe they know this and they spend a lot of effort at it, but SO many local kids “crush” their applicant pool. Or maybe the applicant pool is actually nationally representative, but they find the kids they like in the NE more often, either accidentally or deliberately. Or other things, like legacy, faculty, good-neighbor impact the numbers. I don’t know to what extent these all factor in.</p>

613

<p>But you did show that Harvard is the least “regional” ivy, so maybe there is some effort at becoming less regional. The effort may be mild because the goal might not be a top priority. Anyway, that’s what I would expect.</p>

614

<p>"Because I would have thought they would have spent SOME effort at it. "</p>

<p>And they have. 83% of Harvard students come from outside New England. I would in fact suggest that they have spent a LOT of effort on it. </p>

615

<p>“I find it difficult to believe there is a concentration of “most intelligent adolescents” in certain geographic areas, but easy to believe there are more “top national students” in areas where creating that sort of profile is encouraged.”</p>

<p>50% of a kid’s future is determined by the SES of the parents (per Freakonomics). SES is heavily skewed by geographical area. Q.E.D.</p>

616

<p>exactly - another thing I’ve been waiting for someone to point out.</p>

617

<p><a href=“The 10 Best ZIP Codes to Live In America - Movoto”>http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/best-zip-codes-map/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

618

<p>I just skimmed this, but FWIW it makes perfect sense to me that the Midwestern top privates are most likely to be more geographically balanced than their NE counterparts. When I lived there, most people from the midwest highly (over, in some cases) valued their public universities. Unlike in the Northeast.</p>

<p>My guess is there is a lower population of highly qualified applicants who want to go to a private U and can pay for it in the midwest.There is lower population density overall. To the extent top privates care about SAT scores, IIRC, national merit PSAT cutoffs are lower, overall, in the midwest than in the Northeast. If that translates to lower SAT scores, that could make for a less compelling application. [Though in recent years everyone seems to be equally accepting the ACT].</p>

<p>My impression from living there is far fewer people there make enough money to justify a private college. For the fields my wife & I work in, salaries when we were/are working in the NE were 2-3 X higher than when we did exactly the same jobs in the midwest. On the other hand, housing is 4x higher in the NE, so I can’t guarantee how that all shakes out. it’s just my impression.</p>

<p>If a student in the midwest wants to go to a “top” highly selective private university, it seems likely that he/she will wind up going out of region. Why? because there are only a handful of such institutions in the midwest in the first place to choose from! Most people there, even many top students, go public. Therefore, there’s an increased chance that the school that most optimally meets a particular midweastern top private U applicant’s needs & preferences will be out of area.</p>

<p>Putting all that together, I can easily see where top privates in the midwest could have a harder time filling their class with the best applicants using a pool consisting solely of their home region.</p>

<p>By contrast the Northeast is densely populated, has tons of high-caliber applicants (see higher PSAT cutoffs), with (my guess) more discretionary $$ to spend on a private university. It has many high quality privates to choose from, and the populace if anything undervalues its public universities. Many applicants in the Northeast can optimally meet their academic preferences at a private university that is within 4-5 hours or so from home. The midwestern students would probably prefer to stay reasonably close too, on average, but to do that their choice will more likely be a public U. There are just not many top privates there.</p>

<p>When D1 was applying to colleges from the midwest, I noticed that far more of her classmates went off to Cailifornia than the classmates of D2, applying from NY.The west coast just doesn’t seem so far from where D1 lived. It makes sense to me that this would work the other way around also, at least to some extent.</p>

619

<p>There are two different hypotheses working at cross-purposes.</p>

<p>One is that the kids in the midwest and the south are poorer / dumber (lower SES as a whole, poorer NMF PSAT qualifiers). They might potentially be <em>interested</em> in elite NE schools, but they simply wouldn’t qualify for elite NE school admittance at the same rate as their northeast cousins. </p>

<p>The other is that the kids in the midwest and the south are equally as smart / qualified on a per capita basis, but they don’t BOTHER to apply to elite NE schools because a good portion of them are “snapped up” by Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.</p>

620

<p>What are we really trying to measure?
(a) Drawing power (for what it tells us about the perceived prestige/quality of a school). The fact that many kids from 1000m away (or tip top students from anywhere) want to attend suggests it must have a pretty good, widely-known reputation
(b) Student body diversity (for the presumed educational benefits of living/studying with a variety of people). The fact that kids from Maine, Appalachia, Brooklyn and N. Dakota are represented (along with a good cross-section of the home region) suggests one will get a good range of viewpoints in the classroom or dining halls.
© something else</p>

<p>Some of the issues raised so far will be more or less important depending on the objective. If “b”, then I really only care about who is enrolled, not who applied. If “a”, then I do care about applications and yield.
If your objective is to go to a school with the greatest concentration of future Masters of the Universe, then it is to be expected that cultural, political and economic power centers (NY, DC, Boston, SF) will be over-represented (maybe to the detriment of diversity).</p>