<p>With all due respect, I am afraid that you are either not understanding what Shaw’s number present or are looking for a reason to dismiss. Fwiw, in a sea of utterly worthless information, the annual presentation by Shaw tends to be the most revealing and often contains true gems such as the REAL numbers behind yield and preferences after admission. </p>
<p>In this case, the raw numbers of local vs regional vs national enrollees are entirely relevant, and do not need further density controlling elements. I, for one, do not see how your and Clinton’s analysis change or bring anything new to the numbers shared by Shaw or by Stanford elsewhere. The fact that its student body has a large local and regional component does NOT diminish its national appeal or … reputation in the least. It simply reflects the fact that there are many very strong students in the West and Southwest who consider it their best choice, and especially in the 21st century global economy. Why travel to regions that appear less than hospitable in terms of weather, people, and accommodations when a better school is within driving distance? </p>
<p>In the end, the attempt to demystify the national vs local attendance is an exercise in absolute futility as it impacts EVERY school in the nation with few degrees of variation among highly selective schools and expected huge numbers for public schools. </p>
<p>On the other hand, paying attention to the unusually candid descriptions shared by people such as Dean Shaw are highly instructive to interested parties who want to learn more about the dynamics of admissions at certain schools. </p>
<p>Would you not like to read a similar report of each school in consideration? Or focus on the percentage of local kids at UberCostlyU? I know what information I’d find useless! </p>
<p>Actually, NC is very overweighted at Duke. The states adjacent to NC (VA and GA are the big ones) are overweighted at Duke as well (but PG counts VA as part of the Northeast). However, the biggest southern states of TX and FL aren’t really.</p>
<p>Well, about 1 out of 8 graduating HS students (1 in 7.5 some years) in the US is from California, so that’s why it’s usually the close to the highest represented state if you don’t do the rebalanced indexing the way PG did.</p>
<p>@twoinanddone : OK, and how many at each academy?</p>
<p>BTW, all Congressmen/women (both Reps and Senators) can nominate a certain number as can the VPOTUS.</p>
<p>The POTUS can also nominate a bunch of children of career military and there are special categories for children of deceased/disabled vets and Medal of Honor winners.</p>
<p>However, the military academies would still track the US population distribution pretty well.</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”. "</p>
<p>I didn’t say or suggest anything of the sort. I just thought it was interesting to see how very regional it is. </p>
<p>Sigh, it is POINTLESS to point out what is the state that contributes the most without indexing it to the % of the pop from that state. California could simultaneously be the second most represented state and potentially be underrepresented given its population size. </p>
<p>Thee was a poster once, college help, who was doing some “analysis” and compared what % of Harvard freshman were from CA versus what % of Stanford freshman were from MA and despite repeated explanation why that was stupid, kept doing it. I hope everyone sees the flaw in that analysis. Hint: the pop of CA is several tines that of MA. </p>
<p>"In this case, the raw numbers of local vs regional vs national enrollees are entirely relevant, and do not need further density controlling elements. I, for one, do not see how your and Clinton’s analysis change or bring anything new to the numbers shared by Shaw or by Stanford elsewhere. The fact that its student body has a large local and regional component does NOT diminish its national appeal or … reputation in the least. "</p>
<p>Lol! The point for every single one of these schools is that their student bodies have large local components, which suggests that their locus of appeal is indeed home region. But, we all see what we want to see in our home region, and we all accord the schools in our home region more “brand power” than they have elsewhere. Stanford is not a special snowflake in this regard. </p>
<p>Look, someone upthread was contemplating … Omg, could it possibly be true that people elsewhere don’t know Brown? Film at 11! I can’t possibly understand how anyone doesn’t know Northwestern and Notre Dame :-). The Californians on CC seem to think the rest of us are supposed to have opinions about all the UCs in towns that mean nothing outside California. It’s all regional. The whole thing. </p>
@xiggi so then why are so many strong students from states without especially selective flagships (think New Mexico, Oregon, Nebraska, etc) NOT flocking to schools outside of their region? I doubt an Oklahoma senior interested in the humanities would state that OU is academically better than Emory when presented with accurate information about academic expectations, peer groups, course selections, etc. So why are Oklahomans not applying to Emory? It’s likely that they’ve never heard of the school because Emory’s reputation, like the vast majority of schools, diminishes the father out one goes from its home state.</p>
<p>North Carolina may have more students at Duke than any other state, but that doesn’t mean it’s overrepresented. In square miles it is almost as large as Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined. It is larger than New York, Delaware, and Rhode Island combined. The distance across North Carolina is almost the same as the distance from Richmond to Boston.</p>
<p>Is the percentage of Duke students who come from North Carolina as large as the percentage of students at Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Columbia who come from an equally large region around that particular school? Given the data in the original post, that’s unlikely. (However, I agree that putting Virginia, a Southern state, in the Northeast region skews those data.)</p>
<p>An interesting, probably too complicated, but to me more accurate, way to measure how regional schools are versus one another would be to draw an area of a specific size (i.e. 50,000 square miles) around each school, then determine what percentage of students come from within that area. That wouldn’t take into account population numbers, but it would show the percentage of students who don’t have to travel far from home to go to that school, which seems a more accurate measure of regionality. Would it show that the top Northeast schools are even more regional than they appear to be using population numbers?</p>
<p>If the geographic diversity of student body is reflective of the applicant pool, then It seems people from Midwest and South are less likely to apply to colleges afar than people from Northeast. They are also less aware of (?) and less likely to apply to elite private colleges in general - not just colleges outside their regions but also the ones in their region, relatively. So, while all colleges are “regional” and people everywhere are “provincial”, there are cultural differences among different regions of the country that affect all aspects of lives of the people living there including education.</p>
<p>That said, speaking from personal experience, I discouraged my kid who grew up in Northeast from applying to colleges in the Midwest. I have certain biases against the region and also thought the likely career choices for the said kid would be more available on both coasts. And most importantly, there are so many great choices relatively close to home. Why bother travel afar? However, i do respect people associated with Chicago and NU, knowing they are top level colleges.</p>
<p>Marsian - I would love to have the data for that analysis but I don’t. But yes, that will make the NE schools more regional, but that’s not their “fault” because they’re so close to Bos/NYC/Phila. </p>
<p>Indeed, that will make any urban school “more regional” and any rural school “less regional.” That doesn’t seem meaningful to me - there are simply fewer people nearer a rural school. Grinnell will win that contest merely because there aren’t people close by. </p>
<p>"If the geographic diversity of student body is reflective of the applicant pool, then It seems people from Midwest and South are less likely to apply to colleges afar than people from Northeast. "</p>
<p>No, you can’t conclude that. You are looking at only a tiny slice of students - those who went to top 20 unis and LACs. You’re not looking at “4 year sleep-away” students as a whole. </p>
<p>"They are also less aware of (?) and less likely to apply to elite private colleges in general - not just colleges outside their regions but also the ones in their region, relatively. "</p>
<p>Well, right, because the Midwest and California have powerhouse public flagships. There’s little incentive for a kid in Michigan to go OOS at all. There’s little reason for bright kids in CA to go OOS if they don’t want to.</p>
<p>It was enlightening to me to come on CC and learn about the UCs (beyond Berkeley and UCLA) and how positively they are viewed in CA. Heck, it was enlightening for me to move to the Midwest and learn that “the bright kids” went to big 10 state schools and did just fine – when I lived in the northeast, the state schools were for the not-so-bright. </p>
<p>If the geographic diversity of student body is reflective of the applicant pool, then It seems people from Midwest and South are less likely to apply to colleges afar than people from Northeast. "</p>
<p>Are you defining “far” as distance, or as outside region? I bet there is a reasonable amount of distance traveled in the Midwest in aggregate simply because the big universities located there aren’t as close together and/or close to major population centers as they are in the NE. </p>
<p>“That said, speaking from personal experience, I discouraged my kid who grew up in Northeast from applying to colleges in the Midwest. I have certain biases against the region and also thought the likely career choices for the said kid would be more available on both coasts. And most importantly, there are so many great choices relatively close to home. Why bother travel afar?”</p>
<p>I had biases against the Midwest til I moved there, and realized that upper middle class suburban life near any city is pretty much the same thing no matter where you are. The supposedly most-sophisticated-part of the country – the Northeast – doesn’t often recognize this, and they seriously think it’s somehow different.</p>
<p>It’s also interesting to me that you used “unwillingness to travel” as evidence of provincialism when applied outside the northeast, but “why bother travel afar?” as a positive elsewhere. When Bobby Bright from Michigan stays in The Midwest, he’s provincial, but when Susie Smart from Massachusetts stays nearby, what a smart cookie she is! It’s rather like how a school like Carleton, for example, is too “small town” even though it’s a few miles from a major city, but somehow colleges like Williams in the middle of nowhere - well, that’s different somehow. </p>
<p>And yes, all those other schools you named are heavily overweight their home state as well. But don’t act like Duke isn’t the same in that regard. Duke doesn’t show as strong a home <em>region</em> bias because of the 2 big states in the south, they are only slightly overweight FL and, if anything, underweight TX. But that is partially due to how PG carved up the regions as well. The South is really big compared to the Northeast. TX and Duke may both be in the South, but TX is farther from Duke than any part of the Northeast is from any Northeastern school.</p>
<p>Finally, stop being disingenuous. Yes, NC is a long state, but no populated part of NC is more than a 3.5 hour drive from Duke. NC simply isn’t the size of CA or TX (and FL is longer).</p>