<p>Poetgrl, thank you for the thought but all is well. It is part of participating in a live forum. I do not take comments personally and understand we can get irritated by opinions. The Romans said Qui bene Amat, bene castigat and challenging your friends is fair game. Trust me in that I would treat PG to a latte and we might have the same conversation. I think we can be more direct with people we know a bit. Again all is well! </p>
<p>Linear aggression could be a CC Classic! Like it. </p>
<p>@Swimkidsdad: Benley started the slow clap for your post #776 and I am joining in what should be a rousing ovation.</p>
<p>"That however can’t apply to the Ivies, right, as they offer no better quality of education than the state universities in the S and the MW? So why the rush for folks from the S and the MW to go to college in the NE, if the options are just as good close to home?</p>
<p>Or are the options close to home not really at par with the NE elites after all?"</p>
<p>I want to distinguish between two things - quality of state flagship offerings relative to the Ivies, and quality of elite private offerings (non-NE) relative to the Ivies. As good as I think SOME (not all) if the state flagships are, I wouldn’t consider them equal to Ivies. But for the other elite privates? I don’t see one darn bit of quality difference between (say) U of Chicago, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Penn. Choices there would come down to personal preferences. And in the circles I run in, all of those choices would be of the can’t-go-wrong variety, and it would be laughable to think that Dartmouth or Penn would be “elevated” just because it’s in a particular athletic conference. That and $4 gets you a latte. I just think when you haven’t experienced other parts of the country, it’s hard to get that the “magic Ivy label” just isn’t all that everywhere. </p>
<p>Swim kids, I’d love to see your output too. </p>
<p>So it is settled then? All the analysis shows is that kids like to go to school close to home?</p>
<p>However, that doesn’t explain why so many kids from the west coast come to the north east, in far higher proportion than the south or the mid west. Public school draw cannot be the cause, as the west has a formidable array of good public schools as well.</p>
<p>I wonder if it is because of the quality of the student population. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>PG has also pointed out that Northwestern’s “regionality” display is different from its neighbors WashU and Chicago. I think that’s interesting. I know that both WashU and Chicago have reached out all over the country, but I don’t know if I have heard the same thing about Northwestern. Could that be part of it or is there something else going on?</p>
<p>Northwestern used to favor midwest candidates. I don’t think they do anymore. I also know that their dean of admissions used to be the head of admissions at Princeton, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to get more NE and west coast people, but I think admissions patterns take time to change.</p>
<p>U. of Chicago is more well-known outside the midwest than Northwestern I think. I think NU is sort of like Vanderbilt. People in the region know it is an excellent school, but people outside of the region are sort of oblivious.</p>
<p>I can’t explain why Wash U. is more national. </p>
<h1>785–My thought on this is that the west coast has more Asians than the midwest and south. Ivy league prestige (parents insisting on “only the best, highest ranked” schools) seems to mean more to Asians than some other groups. Also, there is the idea that the coasts are “worth going to,” while flyover country is there to be flown over. Somehow it is reasonable that midwesterners and southerners should “reach UP,” get out of their comfort zones, challenge themselves by going to the northeast. But for easterners (or those from the west coast) to choose to go to the midwest or south is sort of an embarrassment, a step down–they would have some explaining to do.</h1>
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<p>The difference in quality of education, if any, don’t really correlate to prestige once you get into the top 15 and I think most students know that. There are, however, differences in signaling ability of the degree that can student choice. I look at it as people would like to “cash in” all the work that they did in high school and have it show up on their college degree. U. of Illinois is an excellent school, but it is just not very tough to get in and so, among people who care about such things, someone might want to go to a school where you have to be a top student to get in. </p>
<p>“I think NU is sort of like Vanderbilt. People in the region know it is an excellent school, but people outside of the region are sort of oblivious.” </p>
<p>So NU’s regionality pattern “proves” that it’s known within region, but people outside the region are sort of oblivious. How does that square with the Ivies’ extremely similar regionality profile? Does that imply that primarily people within their region know the Ivies, but people outside the region are sort of oblivious? Or does skew to home region mean something magically different by region? </p>
<p>“However, that doesn’t explain why so many kids from the west coast come to the north east, in far higher proportion than the south or the mid west.”</p>
<p>The west is big and wide open and has relatively few colleges outside of its state universities as compared to other parts of the country…</p>
<p>If a NJ kid wants to go to a strong D3 liberal arts college, there are dozens of schools to pick from within a 6 hour drive.</p>
<p>That kid in Denver has only one school within driving distance – Colorado College. Once you are taking a plane, California and Pennsylvania are pretty much a coin toss.</p>
<p>@790: I think you’re right about that, but it depends which ivies you are talking about. HYP are well-known everywhere (or at least among people who are trying to do well at school.) However, midwesterners may consider Northwestern/U. of Chicago as better choices than, say, U. Penn/Dartmouth unless they have some particular preference to going to an ivy league. Also, midwesterners are much more likely to be oblivious to the hotsy-totsy private liberal arts colleges like Bryn Mawr, Middlebury, or even places like Swarthmore or Williams/Amherst. While Wellesley is well-known for being the best women’s college, I don’t think people in the midwest think of it as more prestigious than Northwestern of U. of Chicago. I think that evaluation of prestige might be different in the east coast. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl, we have already established that the farther an elite college is from the center of population in the country, the more it will be regional. So Ivies being more regional (or Stanford and Caltech for that matter) is to be expected. But northwestern should have a more national population as it is closer to the center of population in the country.</p>
<p>Well, now that Rutgers and Maryland are in the Big 10, maybe it’ll serve to enlighten provincial East coasters about the great universities of the Midwest. Now, if the Big 10 could just fulfill its manifest destiny and extend coast to coast…</p>
<p>“As good as I think SOME (not all) if the state flagships are, I wouldn’t consider them equal to Ivies.”</p>
<p>Why not? I thought you didn’t distinguish between schools who are ranked within 20 of each other. </p>
<p>“But for the other elite privates? I don’t see one darn bit of quality difference between (say) U of Chicago, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Penn. Choices there would come down to personal preferences.”</p>
<p>I would agree. These are all clustered togther in the rankings. However, the state flagships are right there as well. I don’t understand why you would not consider them in the same level as the elite S or MW privates (Stanford is in the W, by the way).</p>
<p>Anyway, given that, I still don’t understand is why students from the MW or S need to come to the NE, when they have perfectly good options close by home. Why not let the NE feeder schools clog up the halls of the NE elites, while the best students from the S and MW go to, say, WashU. After all, it is just as good as Penn.</p>
<p>"The west is big and wide open and has relatively few colleges outside of its state universities as compared to other parts of the country…</p>
<p>If a NJ kid wants to go to a strong D3 liberal arts college, there are dozens of schools to pick from within a 6 hour drive.</p>
<p>That kid in Denver has only one school within driving distance – Colorado College. Once you are taking a plane, California and Pennsylvania are pretty much a coin toss."</p>
<p>True, but since the schools in the MW and S are just as good as the schools in the NE and W, as many have claimed on this thread, why show an overwhelming preference for the NE which is farther away?</p>
<p>Could it be that the NE schools are better than that in the MW and S? </p>
<p>The following is my master data set. Miles is the distance from the school to Plato, Mo using google maps. HYP is a variable designating a school as “HYP like”. All data was analyzed using excel regression function.</p>
<p>School index miles hyp
chic 161 373 1
n w 225 373 0
vandy 152 315 0
harv 208 1167 1
price 227 948 1
cornell 302 915 0
rice 204 565 0
stan 249 1619 1
usc 300 1472 0
MIT 180 1167 1
yale 214 1060 1
wash u 159 134 0
n d 195 428 0
</p>
<p>“However, that doesn’t explain why so many kids from the west coast come to the north east, in far higher proportion than the south or the mid west.”</p>
<p>Let’s say the Denver kid wants to play basketball at a D3 college. He’s got 1 school in CO. 10 in CA, 4 in WA, 5 in OR, all of which are a plane flight away. Zero schools like that in AZ, UT, MT, NM, NV and WY. </p>
<p>58 schools like that in PA, 63 in NY, 38 in MA, 22 in OH, 14 in NJ, 18 in MN, 23 in IL. </p>
<p>That’s why the West exports college kids to other regions more than other parts of the country.</p>
<p>The following is the analysis from excel using only the miles and index values. Note that the intercept is 160 and that no school is within 100 miles of Plato.</p>
<p>SUMMARY OUTPUT </p>
<p>Regression Statistics<br>
Multiple R 0.643764<br>
R Square 0.414432<br>
Adjusted R Square 0.361199<br>
Standard Error 38.59589<br>
Observations 13 </p>
<p>ANOVA<br>
df SS MS F
Regression 1 11597.16 11597.16 7.785193
Residual 11 16386.07 1489.643<br>
Total 12 27983.23 </p>
<pre><code>Coefficients Standard Error t Stat P-value
</code></pre>
<p>Intercept 160.7157 21.74836 7.389786 1.38E-05
miles 0.065176 0.023359 2.790196 0.01758</p>
<p>RESIDUAL OUTPUT </p>
<p>Observation Predicted index Residuals Standard Residuals
1 185.0264 -24.0264 -0.65019 chic
2 185.0264 39.97357 1.081748 n w
3 181.2462 -29.2462 -0.79145 vandy
4 236.7762 -28.7762 -0.77873 harv
5 222.5027 4.497319 0.121705 price
6 220.3519 81.64813 2.209528 cornell
7 197.5402 6.459763 0.174811 rice
8 266.2358 -17.2358 -0.46643 stan
9 256.655 43.34505 1.172986 usc
10 236.7762 -56.7762 -1.53646 MIT
11 229.8024 -15.8024 -0.42764 yale
12 169.4493 -10.4493 -0.28278 wash u
13 188.6111 6.388888 0.172893 n d</p>
<p>Note that the residuals for WashU are negative but only slightly so- In other words Pizzagirl and I are both right.</p>