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

Parents Forum
801

<p>The following is the analysis from excel using the miles, HYP and index values. Note the Coefficient value for HYP. The quantification of the “Blood Sport” gives an index value of -56. </p>

<p>SUMMARY OUTPUT </p>

<p>Regression Statistics<br>
Multiple R 0.833108<br>
R Square 0.694069<br>
Adjusted R Square 0.632882<br>
Standard Error 29.25909<br>
Observations 13 </p>

<p>ANOVA<br>
df SS MS F Significance F
Regression 2 19422.29 9711.143 11.34354 0.00268
Residual 10 8560.945 856.0945<br>
Total 12 27983.23 </p>

<pre><code>Coefficients Standard Error t Stat P-value Lower 95%
</code></pre>

<p>Intercept 162.1198 16.49372 9.829186 1.86E-06 125.3695
miles 0.095707 0.020385 4.69492 0.000848 0.050286
hyp -56.6546 18.73918 -3.02333 0.012822 -98.4081</p>

<p>RESIDUAL OUTPUT </p>

<p>Observation Predicted index Residuals Standard Residuals<br>
1 141.1639 19.83605 0.742651 chic<br>
2 197.8186 27.18143 1.017659 n w
3 192.2676 -40.2676 -1.5076 vandy<br>
4 217.1554 -9.15539 -0.34277 harv<br>
5 196.1955 30.80447 1.153303 price<br>
6 249.6918 52.30818 1.958391 cornell
7 216.1943 -12.1943 -0.45655 rice<br>
8 260.415 -11.415 -0.42737 stan<br>
9 303.0007 -3.00068 -0.11234 usc
10 217.1554 -37.1554 -1.39108 MIT
11 206.9147 7.085269 0.265269 yale<br>
12 174.9446 -15.9446 -0.59696 wash u<br>
13 203.0825 -8.08246 -0.3026 n d </p>

<p>Note Vanderbilt’s high negative residual.</p>

<p>Time to watch football- I’ll be back later.</p>

802

<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>In addition to northwesty’s sports analysis, perhaps there are some west coast kids who have the view of Boston as the quintessential college town, or NYC as being the hub of excitement and nightlife and that preference leads to a particular choice of college.</p>

<p>Even though we live in the NE, one of my kids was so drawn to NYC that his college’s location there played a huge role in his preference. Another child did not feel the same draw and chose a school in the midwest. My current applicant is open to everything. As a parent, I’ve encouraged her to look in all parts of the country, because I think it is a good maturation experience to spend some time in a new part of the country.</p>

803

<p>Northwesty, I understand that the NE offers a great choice of LACs. I also understand that the has relatively less LACs. But this discussion is not about LACs, it’s about elite universities from the list Pizzagirl provided. There are many many elite universities in that list in the MW and S, in fact more than there from the NE. (Of course, the key assumption is that the elites in S and MW are of the same calibre as the ones in the NE.) Why are kids from the W showing a preference for the NE schools which are fewer in number and farther away?</p>

<p>There could be two explanations in my opinion. The first is that the NE elites are superior to the S and MW elites. The second is that they are superior, but the people from the W are deluded. Which one do you think could be the case?</p>

804

<p>Atomom, Asians are less than 10% of the population of the W. I doubt they can be influencing the overall preference of the W that much, unless you believe that elite students are concentrated among Asians. Do you believe that?</p>

805

<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>Well, I’ll be sure to tell my D she isn’t really welcome at her NE LAC, lol. </p>

<p>Just because <em>you</em> prefer to stay close to home – why should I restrict my kids that way? Are you afraid they’ll give off cooties? </p>

<p>I’m used to a world in which people hop on planes and it’s no big deal. I’m used to people who are knowledgeable about other parts of the country, not intimidated or dismissive of them just for being located elsewhere. </p>

<p>I have one niece who went west for college and stayed there. I have one niece who went south and is now in London for work. I have one nephew who went east and stayed there. This is what we call normal in our world. We let our kids spread their wings. If my kids (current seniors) wind up back here, terrific, but it won’t be because they’ve been told that they don’t “belong” elsewhere if they so choose. Or that they don’t “deserve” to compete with the locals. </p>

<p>Lots of people in my neck of the woods are provincial and don’t see a world much beyond our immediate area, but that doesn’t mean I have to join them. I was just as provincial about the NE when I lived there. </p>

806

<p>“Atomom, Asians are less than 10% of the population of the W. I doubt they can be influencing the overall preference of the W that much, unless you believe that elite students are concentrated among Asians. Do you believe that?”</p>

<p>Not atomom, but yes, I think it’s certainly plausible that students of Asian heritage are over represented in the pool of elite students relative to their share of the population. And this would affect CA elite students more given that roughly half of Asians in the US live in CA. </p>

807

<p>“thought you didn’t distinguish between schools who are ranked within 20 of each other”</p>

<p>Hmmm. Where did you get that from? </p>

<p>In previous threads, I’ve said that I don’t distinguish between the top 20 (in the sense that of my kids hypothetically got into all top 20 schools, the choice would come down to personal preference. </p>

<p>But I don’t think I’ve said that on this thread. </p>

<p>I thought you were new here? </p>

<p>But yes, I’m indifferent between (say) Duke and Northwestern, but I’m not indifferent between either one and (say) the U of Illinois. </p>

808

<p>Swim kids dad, just out of curiosity, what was your criteria for selecting only 13 of the 22 research unis on my list?</p>

<p>And what do you find if you do the same for the LACs? My post 4 lists the 21 top LACs. </p>

809

<p>“Just because <em>you</em> prefer to stay close to home – why should I restrict my kids that way? Are you afraid they’ll give off cooties?”
Wow, PG, you took Catalan’s words as expressing a personal preference? I didn’t read it that way at all.</p>

810

<p>You know, there’s probably another reason people from, say the west or south might gravitate toward northeastern schools–if they want to visit before the kid applies, they can knock off a lot of them on one trip. If a kid from California wanted to look at the top three midwestern privates–NU, Chicago and WashU–they’d have to drive 5 hours or so from the Chicago area to St. Louis to see them all in one trip (or fly from ORD/MDW-STL, I guess, but that would be a pain). If they want to do the grand east coast tour, they can easily fly into Boston or NYC or Philly and visit multiple Ivies pretty easily via the excellent train system that connects them. This would also be true if they wanted to fly to some starting point and see a bunch of LACs (although depending on which schools they were visiting, they might want a car). There is just a greater concentration of schools to see in a small geographic area. By contrast, a family that wanted to see Carleton or Grinnell or Davidson wouldn’t have as many additional schools nearby to make the trip so worthwhile.</p>

811

<p>Pizzagirl, Of course you can choose to do what you want. This discussion is not about you, it is about general preferences. Though, if you had a NE bias when you were in NE, and an out of MW bias when you are MW, one can only wonder if you truly became less provincial, or you just continue to have a NE bias. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. Many parents from the S and MW and posting here have shown a NE bias as well, and as the numbers show, people from the W have a clear NE bias. Putting all this together, one conclusion could be that NE elite schools are better, another could be that Americans as such are deluded. Which one do you think is the case?</p>

<p>You has earlier said on this thread that you do not distinguish between colleges which are clustered in a rank spread of 20. Of course, mathematically speaking, that means you do not distinguish between any college at all, as Rank 1 is the same as rank 20, which is the same as rank 39, so on and so forth. While I do not agree with that, that’s not what I am challenging. I am just curious why top-20 schools are all the same, but top11-30 schools are not. </p>

<p>One other note, I am just trying to follow the Socratic method here, by asking questions. The key questions to me are:</p>

<p>1) Do people on average like to go to college closer to home?
2) Do coleges on average like to cater to the local population?
3) Given that, should the colleges in the two coasts have a more predominant regional skew than the colleges in the middle of the country?
4) Should regions with strong state schools export even less students to other states, and in turn turn other states into more regional?
5) If a college overcomes all these forces, and and draws a population that is more nationally representative than what the above factors would have indicated otherwise, does that such a college is an elite among the elites?
6) Are all elite collegs the same? If yes, why would people from a region with many elite colleges (S/MW) still rue the lack of admission to elite colleges in other regions (NE), while people from other regions (NE/W) do not complain about lack of admission to elite colleges in other regions (MW/S)? Does it mean that there is a difference in eliteness of the elite colleges by region (with a bias towards the NE), or are Americans just deluded?
7) If people on average like to go to college closer to home, why would someone from the W rather go to an elite college in the NE than one in the S/MW? Are people from the W deluded about college quality between NE vs. S/MW?</p>

<p>I think we can learn a lot of elite colleges, Americans, and in particular our own biases if we honestly answer these questions.</p>

812

<p>“Wow, PG, you took Catalan’s words as expressing a personal preference? I didn’t read it that way at all.”</p>

<p>Thank you. </p>

813

<p>“Though, if you had a NE bias when you were in NE, and an out of MW bias when you are MW, one can only wonder if you truly became less provincial, or you just continue to have a NE bias.”</p>

<p>I had a NE bias when I lived there. I thought much of the rest if the country was the sticks (think NYorker cartoon). </p>

<p>When I moved to the Midwest, I grew up. I realized that there were pockets of certain types of people everywhere, and upper middle class life near any major city is pretty much the same thing. I saw how provincial I’d been. </p>

<p>And yes, there are provincial people here in the Midwest too. I don’t think it’s very sophisticated or intelligent to act as though there’s no life beyond Illinois or Indiana. But it’s no less provincial to act as though there’s no life outside the Boston-DC corridor either. Neither of those attitudes are indicative of sophistication, IMO. </p>

814

<p>“Not atomom, but yes, I think it’s certainly plausible that students of Asian heritage are over represented in the pool of elite students relative to their share of the population. And this would affect CA elite students more given that roughly half of Asians in the US live in CA.”</p>

<p>Fact remains that Asians are still less than 10% of the population in the West, and elite colleges still have less than 20% (on average) Asian representation in their student population. So, it is very unlikely that Asians are the ones that influence the push by people from the W to come to the NE instead of the S or the MW. If you do not believe this, I can mathematically prove it to you. Just provide me the W representation at HYP.</p>

815

<p>"I had a NE bias when I lived there. I thought much of the rest if the country was the sticks (think NYorker cartoon).</p>

<p>When I moved to the Midwest, I grew up."</p>

<p>Then why do you still subscribe to an out-of-MW preference when it comes to college? So much so that you believe your one kid that made it back to the NE LAC is having a better education than the other kid who is attending a MW LAC?</p>

<p>Doesn’t compute for me.</p>

816

<p>A) Twin A attends a Midwest research university, not a Midwest LAC. Twin B attends a NE LAC. </p>

<p>B) where did I say that I think Twin B is having a “better education” than Twin A? Both educations are excellent; the differences relate more to the inherent diffs of a larger uni vs a smaller LAC. Both have access to large cities.</p>

<p>I said that I wished Twin A had gone out of region, but that’s not because of the quality of the actual school. It’s merely because I would have wanted that kid to experience a different part of the country. It didn’t have to be the NE, for crying out loud. </p>

<p>Neither of my kids studied abroad, for various reasons including the demands of their majors they weren’t interested, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have been a broadening experience. </p>

817

<p>“Then why do you still subscribe to an out-of-MW preference when it comes to college?”</p>

<p>I have an out-of-REGION preference. Since approx 55% of all elite seats reside in the NE, it’s likely that such out-of-region preference winds up in the NE. But no, I had no explicit vested interest. We looked at schools everywhere and they made their final choices. </p>

818

<p>

PG, that’s unfair. Back in post #126, you responded to my story of realizing cities across the country seemed more similar than not:

And then in post 160, you poignantly questioned:

I said that description was “fictional” because I had had that realization a long while ago through maybe a similar experience as yours described here. My question is - Why were you so “surprised” when you yourself had gone through a similar experience? And where was your “general handle on things” coming from the sophisticated northeast back then?</p>

819

<p>Pizzagirl, what percentage of the colleges you visited were from the NE, S, MW, and W? Did you do a proportional distribution (within a tight variance band, of course)?</p>

<p>Also, why do you think 55% of elite colleges are in the NE, when far less than 55% of the U.S. Population lives in the NE? What are the other regions doing to cater to the needs of their elite students? </p>

<p>Or is it that the other regions have less elite colleges (proportionally) because they have less elite students as well? This of course would call into question whether elite student distribution is uniform across all states.</p>

<p>So, is it the regions’ fault for not building enough elite schools for their kids, or is it the regions’ fault for not developing enough elite students? And what is the NE doing right here? Finally, doesn’t that call into question whether all the regions are the same when it comes to education?</p>

820

<p>PG,</p>

<p>I excluded some of the north colleges to keep my analysis geographically balanced. I excluded some of the Ivy league schools because I felt they may have a “HYP effect” and these could be added back in using an HYP value of 0.5. Emory was excluded due the possible effects of the Oxford college admissions. I previously discussed Duke and I think the LAC should have a separate analysis.</p>