<p>I’m not criticizing the analysis at all. It’s very interesting. Good work. </p>
<p>I would make a relatively weak argument that what <em>state</em> the applicant is from has less influence than how urban/suburban/rural the applicant is. The applicant from suburban Chicago is more similar to the applicant from suburban Houston or suburban Boston or suburban Philadelphia or suburban Los Angeles than she is to the applicant from either inner-city Chicago or rural South Dakota (same region). Travel burdens, culture, high school preparation and parental/community expectations align better with type of community than area of the country.</p>
<p>I agree with your points in post 60 and wish I had had that data to work with. Certainly the pull of certain schools in certain upper middle class bubbles is more similar than different. </p>
<p>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>Are we assuming all of us on CC are representative of our regions? Those perfectly satisfied with their (non-NE) local choices probably don’t end up here. If they are familiar with the state schools and understand admissions there, why are they logging in here? I would imagine the board skews towards those with an interest in very competitive colleges and a belief in magic dust, as well as those trying to figure out the FA/scholarship scene nationally. I guess it might be interesting to know what brought individuals here in the first place.</p>
<p>adding: It’s an interesting thread PG and should keep us entertained a while. Thanks. : )</p>
<p>One thought about service academies - I believe they have seven-day schedules, so issues like how easy it is to get home might be moot as compared to colleges. Students who apply to them are assumed to be very dedicated and sure of their path, even compared to those targeting Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>My one brother went to Northwestern, and he hardly came home to NJ. We could not afford for him to fly home, so he would stay on campus for Thanksgiving and come home for Christmas and summer. Luckily I had a bunch of siblings, so my parents did not miss him much, but considering he dropped out of six-year med within a few weeks, perhaps if he could have come home that first weekend or two, his whole trajectory may have been different.</p>
<p>I would think as lower income people are courted more and more by top universities, it is less likely someone would take a full ride far away rather than a full ride close by, because I am not aware of any college paying transportation costs.</p>
<p>I’ll agree that geographic diversity is only part of the issue, and that upper middle class suburban - whose families can afford their EFC because they’ve been able to save or build equity - are very very common and contribute more to a lack of diversity than geography.</p>
<p>Large urban areas and resort areas have have more people that have migrated to those areas from other regions so i think there is greater awareness of lesser known colleges and institutions in other parts of the country. My friend in Chicago is showing her children colleges and universities where SHE grew up in the NE as well as all the usual midwest suspects. Her kids will be full ride and can go pretty much wherever they get accepted. And the kids’ high school is full of “people like her and her husband.” I think the pull of what this board considers elite NE institutions comes from family history and in some urban areas from immigrant perceptions coupled with the aspirational families who want for there kids something they perhaps could not have had. </p>
<p>"Large urban areas and resort areas have have more people that have migrated to those areas from other regions so i think there is greater awareness of lesser known colleges and institutions in other parts of the country. "</p>
<p>Even so, the Southeast has large urban areas and the only unis they over index to are Duke, Vamdy, Emory. The West has large urban areas and yet I don’t believe a single NE, Midwest or southern school over indexed to the west -at most average. </p>
<p>"My friend in Chicago is showing her children colleges and universities where SHE grew up in the NE as well as all the usual midwest suspects. "</p>
<p>Interesting premise. One can always manipulate statistics, and pick and choose which ones plus how to use them. Using enrollments, not percentages of those who apply or myriads of other factors seems good to me.</p>
<p>I do agree than many of the “top” schools are really just the best choices for their region. I never heard of Wellesley (post #25) until CC and do not consider it any better than myriads of LACs. After a long time hearing about it I still don’t understand people’s fascination with it. Perhaps the great number of CC posters from the NE with their regionalism is why they think it is so good. In the areas with excellent flagships people do not understand why one would downgrade to a small private LAC, with such limited opportunities in comparison.</p>
<p>NC resident has a good point in post #16. Being from another state with an excellent flagship I understand why top students don’t bother looking far away. Not everyone favors the NE vibe. Most students do go to college fairly close to home. I wonder if people in the NE states would feel better about public schools if they funded public education like they have in the upper Midwest? I also hear on CC about so many who choose private HSs instead of investing in their local public ones. </p>
<p>Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.</p>
<p>One fact I find amusing on some of the east coast school stats lists is the number/percentage from OOS. Given the small size of most of those states being OOS does not mean being from very many miles away. Therefore, using regions was the way to go by the OP. All schools are basically regional. I think the term “national” versus “regional” is used in reference to recognition and reputation. Therefore some, but not all, excellent private schools will make the list (I doubt Wellesley should- never heard of any of its grads or anything it has done to merit attention). Likewise some but not all public flagships make national lists. </p>
<p>Very happy that you highlighted the regionalism of schools with national reputations, OP! That is one good reason they will remain provincial in nature- outsiders do not want their student culture as often as those who know no other. There is a real surplus of excellent students in this country relative to the number of spaces available at any school. Therefore it is easy for the top east coast schools to fill their classes without attempting a quota system by region. I wonder how the area’s alumni, mostly from that region, would react if equalization occurred? How much outrage and lack of donations?</p>
<p>Among many Chinese students, there’s also the association with Soong Mei-Ling(a.k.a. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek) who attended and graduated as a Durant Scholar in 1917. While a polarizing figure among many Chinese and Americans, one cannot deny her influence in Sino-American relations during the 40s. </p>
<p>As for the large concentration of Asians in California, that’s largely a product of immigration patterns and history. Also, due to widespread discriminatory attitudes against various immigrant groups in US history including Asian-Americans, Asian-Americans like many other previous immigrant groups tended to concentrate in areas where they have a large concentration…such as the West Coast areas and urban areas there and in parts of the Northeast. </p>
<p>This is especially because some discriminatory laws…such as against racial miscegenation(racially mixed marriages) were still on the books and enforced as late as the late '60s in certain regions of the US. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So you never heard of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Diane Sawyer, Cokie Roberts, Lynn Sher, etc?</p>
<p>Immigrants have always colonized in particular regions - mine happened to land in the UP and migrate into the lower Peninsula moving from one area where they had friends from the old country to another area where they had friends from the old country. Given proximity and climate it makes much sense that California is where the asian immigrant population colonized. </p>
<p>I think more parents perhaps, know if the women’s colleges/Seven Sisters colleges as they were still in existence when “we” were in high school. I could name the seven sisters colleges when I started CC but believe me there were dozens and dozens and dozens of LACs in Pennsylvania, NY, MA that I had never heard of and I had lived on the east coast for short periods of time.</p>
<p>I was surprised by how many students from outside of the Northeast went to some of the smaller, more remote LACs. My son was determined to apply to Whitman (we are NJ residents). I said that it was the equivalent of someone from the West Coast applying to Middlebury or Bates, in terms of how labor-intensive the trip would be (flight to Portland or Seattle, followed by a 4-5 hour drive to Walla Walla). When I looked over Whitman’s stats, I was not surprised to see that the vast majority of students came from the West Coast (esp. the Pacific Northwest). The interesting fact was the number from New England. Whitman sent admissions reps around to New England prep schools, apparently, where they offered the dual advantage of less regional competition, and going somewhere that wouldn’t be quite as full of northeastern preppies, while providing a similar “vibe.” Whitman did not recruit nearly as heavily in the mid-Atlantic region. Whitman seems like a great college, but I’m relieved that my son decided not to go there. </p>
<p>Not to mention journalists Nora Ephron, Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners), Linda Wertheimer, Elizabeth Drew, Susan Sheehan, Geneva Overholser, et al; plus Overholser’s sister Nannerl Keohane, president of Wellesley and subsequent first female president of Duke, Diane Ravitch…Maybe it is because you are less likely to have heard of the accomplishments of women. Take a gander at this list:</p>
<p>One of the things that strikes me about the indexed figures, is that they show that students from the Southeast are more inclined to stay at home, and that students from the northeast are more likely to roam, although they, of course, stay “home” in droves also. </p>
<p>FWIW, my father graduated from a large public HS in Portland, OR that served, as far as I can tell, a large Scandinavian and Chinese immigrant population. The top male students of his era, both Scandinavian and Chinese, went to schools including Stanford, Yale, and Princeton. I understand that from talking to one of the others that this was at least partially the influence of the principal, who was a Yale grad, and who encouraged them to spread their wings.</p>
<p>I noticed the same thing, Consolation, about the Southeast and Northeast.</p>
<p>I had never expected that a school like Harvard or Stanford would draw equally from every region, nor did I doubt that their student population would be skewed toward their own region. However, I would expect that you are more likely to see students from outside the generally area at these ‘national’ schools, more so than less well-known schools in the general area. </p>
<p>I’m wondering if the Duke results are so different because the next state over, VA, and also DC, is classified as NE rather than SE. And a very small quibble, but if VA is classified as NE, then W&L should also be classified as a NE liberal arts college.</p>
<p>It’s inevitable that somebody will put these numbers in rank order. May as well be me
Here are the percentages of “in region” students I count for each university Pizzagirl listed:</p>
<p>% In Region … School
31% … Duke
38% … WashU
38% … Chicago
40% … Vbilt
44% … MIT
45% … Emory
46% … Notre Dame
50% … Harvard
51% … Yale
53% … NU
54% … Princeton
55% … Dartmouth
57% … Rice (counting it as Southern not Western)
57% … Brown
59% … Columbia
59% … Stanford
61% … Gtown
63% … CMU
65% … Penn
66% … JHU
71% … USC
71% … Cornell</p>
<p>It is meaningful to applicants even if not to you. As a Texas applicant, I know there only so many people that might be admitted. Irrespective of all the macro analysis, at the micro level, we understand there is a cap of around 35 seats at HYPS for Houston and it has not changed over several years. Only the schools getting students in and the numbers per school change year to year but not the total.</p>
<p>Thanks for doing this great analysis, PG!
There is no college which is truly national according to your definition, but schools fall in different places along the continuum of national stature. I don’t know what others think, but to me what makes a university “national” is the positive name recognition across the country, not just the student body. The point is that a large number people all over the country will have heard of the school and view it favorably. A large number, NOT EVERYONE. A true national university’s reputation or appeal will be strong enough to motivate a critical mass of people to undergo the cost and inconvenience of leaving their home region to attend. For example, more people from other states and the world attend Princeton than attend its close neighbor Rider, which is also a private school in NJ. More students in different regions of the country will have heard of Princeton than of Rider, and of those that have heard of both, more will view Princeton favorably. Having a place in culture and media is also an aspect of this concept of being national. When fictional characters in movies go to college, they never go to Rider but they do attend Princeton. And when experts are invited to weigh in on network news, they are almost never from Rider. The fact that not everyone who has heard of Princeton and views it favorably is motivated to apply and attend, does not change the fact it has more national status than many other schools. </p>
<p>The reasons why Duke gets relatively few applicants from North Carolina, and probably from the South in general:</p>
<ol>
<li>The belief among NC residents that students at state universities, particularly UNC and NC State (for engineering), get just as strong an education at a fraction of the cost. (Financial aid may negate this for some students but not for most.)</li>
<li>School/team loyalties. In NC, this is huge. State and Carolina have enormous fan bases in NC. Duke’s fan base is much smaller. Many students wouldn’t dream of applying to a rival school.</li>
<li>The feeling among many North Carolinians that Duke is where wealthy Northerners go and is not really a North Carolina school. Thus, the reference to Duke as the University of New Jersey at Durham.</li>
</ol>
<p>Duke has made a special effort in recent years to recruit more applicants from NC schools. The Trinity Scholarships are specifically for NC and SC students. Given the reasons above, though, Duke may continue to have a hard time selling itself in NC.</p>
<p>". don’t know what others think, but to me what makes a university “national” is the positive name recognition across the country, not just the student body. The point is that a large number people all over the country will have heard of the school and view it favorably. A large number, NOT EVERYONE. "</p>
<p>The vast majority of people in this country get their awareness of colleges through football / basketball. They may view places they’ve heard of favorably, but it’s not a real quality assessment. </p>
<p>Well, PG, what you are proving here is that people tend to stay close to their loved ones or the surroundings they are used to. Reputation and quality of colleges are in relative terms, as theGFG pointed out. Just because all colleges are more or less regional doesn’t mean they are all “equal”. On the other hand, if the majority of people’s awareness of colleges still stems from sports, US News rankings are not doing much after all.</p>
