<p>That’s an interesting link, PurpleTitan. Only 58 students from Virginia in the class of 2017. Numbers are going down from Virginia (although always were under 100), possibly because even more kids are staying instate or looking more for merit aid given the economy. But that is just a guess.</p>
<p>Really nice study. Thanks Pizzagirl! I have actually changed my view on looking ‘nationally’ to looking more ‘regionally’ for colleges. We are now looking for colleges for our second child, and have a much different attitude going in than we did with our 1st. We’ve seen the awesome opportunities and fun that my daughter and her friends are having at the midwestern state flagships. As I look at schools for my 2nd child I keep asking myself ‘what does this school offer that xxx doesn’t’, and the answer that keeps coming back is nothing really other than the opportunity to live farther away. Both my spouse and I went to top 15 schools, one in the east and one in the midwest, and we really don’t think they have much more to offer, especially to kids who are in the flagship honors programs. </p>
<p>On another note, it would be fun to see the geographical distribution of CC users! </p>
<p>I am taking a step back and trying to think about this outside the CC mindset. If you live anywhere in the country where you are satisfied with your local colleges and you think your kids will be accepted, why do you look elsewhere and how do you end up on this board? When I lived in the NE, some parents would say there are so many fantastic schools within a few hours drive it just doesn’t make sense to apply to schools that require air travel. I don’t think that made them provincial. Some of those folks were extremely well traveled and had maybe lived in different areas of the country. If parents thought their kids couldn’t get into comparable NE colleges, they started looking at the midwest and CA. And of course there were always some who thought an important part of the college experience could be living far from home for a few years. I am sure there are parents like that in all areas of the country.</p>
<p>In the southern locale where I now live some friends are from families with local roots going back more than 200 years. They don’t want their kids to live in the NE, or the midwest or the west coast. So they aren’t eager to send them out of state to college. They don’t want that access to recruiters that is important to other families. I don’t think that makes them provincial. Again, this is sometimes a well traveled and sophisticated group. However, they value an attachment to the land and family that will disappear if the family spreads out cross country. I don’t think that sentiment equals provincialism. </p>
<p>A conviction your own child’s college is the best (whether that college is Harvard or Stanford or Chicago or Michigan or UNC or Alabama or any of the other multitude of colleges in the country) seems to me an endearing parental characteristic, not necessarily provincialism. I also don’t think there is anything wrong with considering where you live “best” - isn’t it sort of like supporting a sports team?</p>
<p>I admit to a little bias that I think it’s a bit provincial to not want to explore elsewhere, and I say that as a parent of a kid who does attend school in my (metaphorical) backyard, and while it’s made logistics easier than for my cross-country kid, I do wish he’d seen / lived in another part of the country. </p>
<p>^^ I’ve got one like that, after two adventuresome kids, but it’s hard to argue going out of state with a kid who wants to be an engineer. I took him all over looking at colleges. Provincialism, not in the least. </p>
<p>re post #85, Purple Titan, I don’t recall the exact distribution, but more of the students from this school, located in Maryland, went to the Naval Academy than the others. Maybe 6 of the 12? And this is one small school (1000 students) in the state, so I’m sure students from other schools also wanted to attend the academies (and were admitted and appointed). </p>
<p>This recap of the current distribution at the Naval Academy backs me up - certain regional states are overrepresented at the academies; 36% at the Naval academy come from 5 states, with Maryland overrepresented based on population…
__
Associated Press</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) – More than a third of the U.S. Naval Academy’s students are from five states: California, Texas, Maryland, Virginia and Florida.</p>
<p>The academy released a distribution of midshipmen by state at a Board of Visitors meeting Monday.</p>
<p>California had the highest number of students with 442. Texas came second with 331. Maryland, which is home to the academy, has 300 students. Virginia came next with 286, followed by Florida with 280.</p>
<p>Together, those states account for 1,639 of the academy’s 4,572 students. That’s about 36 percent of the Brigade of Midshipmen.</p>
<p>Vermont was the state with the fewest students with seven, followed by North Dakota with eight and South Dakota with nine. Wyoming, New Hampshire and Alaska had 14 each.</p>
<p>The District of Columbia has four students at the academy.</p>
<p>So even the service academies are not national universities!</p>
<p>GFG raises an interesting point-- if your kid has any interest at all in working for a large company, the reputation of the school can be (I didn’t say MUST be) a factor. If a company sends a recruiting team to Penn State year after year, and gets a poor return on its investment because it is recruiting students for a management training program where a young employee can and will be transferred regularly in their first few years and the students don’t want that kind of lifestyle/job- then a company stops recruiting at Penn State. (I’m picking on Penn State just because studies indicate that people born in Pennsylvania have the lowest geographic mobility of any other state, i.e. if you are born in PA you are more likely to live and die in PA then if you are from Ohio or Florida).</p>
<p>This phenomenon can explain why certain colleges “punch above their weight” when it comes to hiring (BYU being an obvious example) and others tend to attract local employers but not ones outside their region. If I’m hiring a kid at BYU, by and large the university’s culture promotes a global mindset even the school is extremely homogeneous. I’m not worried that a new BYU employee is going to balk at being sent to my company’s Caracas office for a three month rotation.</p>
<p>So while PG’s analysis is extremely helpful in understanding regional admissions patterns, it’s not the only factor. GFG’s example of Rider and Princeton is spot on. Purdue has a national reputation in certain departments and fields- Ball State does not.</p>
<p>Moreover, there are college’s which benefit from a reputational “spillover” based on certain strengths. UNC has a top ranked business school (graduate level) which I think benefits many other departments and programs. Wharton lifted the reputation of Penn Arts and Sciences long before US News was ranking schools. Steinhart and Stern for NYU. Etc. Northwestern has benefited enormously (in my opinion) from its strengths in music, grad level MBA, and journalism. Kellogg has an international reputation even among people who may have never heard of Northwestern.</p>
<p>So there are “regionalisms” in terms of student body, and “regionalisms” in terms of reputation. And they don’t always match up. The “best” programs may be at colleges your neighbor or the guy at the dry cleaners has never heard of. But if the people who hire people out of those programs would not be interested in a student from “my local college which impresses my neighbors”, staying close to home may not be the way to go.</p>
<p>“This phenomenon can explain why certain colleges “punch above their weight” when it comes to hiring (BYU being an obvious example) and others tend to attract local employers but not ones outside their region.”</p>
<p>Well said. We can all name colleges that seem to do well in our local areas and are well thought of, even though they are blips on CC. Here in Chicago, I would put DePaul and Marquette in that category – they aren’t NU or U of Chicago, but they’re generally solid. Every place will have its own similar colleges, of course. </p>
<p>^Agreed. St. Thomas in the Twin Cities is another example. Major corporations in the area (Target, Best Buy, 3M, Wells Fargo, US Bank, several major healthcare organizations) recruit very heavily there. Students seem to have no trouble finding internships, either.</p>
<p>I know several extremely bright kids who work for Target headquarters in MPLS in business analyst types of positions. It’s just as interesting and uses the same skills that business analysts on WS use; yes, they make less, but they are in a lower cost of living area and are able to have a life without being at the office til midnight 6 days a week. I can’t imagine on what planet that would be considered a bad or undesirable outcome. </p>
<p>Part of the provincialism on CC is also what constitutes a “good job,” I suppose. </p>
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<p>Stern I can see, but Steinhardt? The latter makes far less sense as it’s mainly focused in the field of education and just two decades ago, tended to have easier admission requirements than even NYU CAS. </p>
<p>Were you really thinking of Tisch school of the Arts which like Stern had long been the other undergraduate jewel at NYU? </p>
<p>True, PG. And it is hard to imagine any parent here not thinking a job at a reputable Fortune 500 company right out of college is a good thing. I also would way rather have my kid start out in a city where he/she could enjoy a decent standard of living (Minneapolis/St. Paul, Omaha, Raleigh, Austin)–especially if paying off student loans is part of the equation.</p>
<p><a href=“America's 15 Best Cities For Young Professionals”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2014/08/18/americas-15-best-cities-for-young-professionals/</a></p>
<p>My observation regarding employment-related “provincialism” on CC is that it is field-related, not regional. :)</p>
<p>Interesting stuff. Thanks PG.</p>
<p>What jumps out at me is that students from the northeast are over-represented at all but 3 top “national” universities. </p>
<p>To me, the explanation is found in this observation from Pizzagirl:.
With its heavy concentration of good privates and relative dearth of quality publics, parents and students in the NE probably have a fundamentally different mindset about colleges than the rest of us.</p>
<p>Based on this, I expect that students from the northeast are significantly over-represented at private colleges generally.</p>
<p>This is a fascinating thread.</p>
<p>I was surprised (to say the least) the Virginia is considered to be in the “Northeast”. Even here in NoVA, I don’t know if anyone considers it that. And unlike much of the “actual” NE, VA has a lot of great state schools. Much like the midwest (where I am from) many of the brightest kids in VA don’t even consider OOS schools when they can study business at UVA, liberal arts at W & M or engineering at VATech. </p>
<p>Smart colleges in other regions recruit heavily in the NE. As other posters have said, many states in the NE have public U systems that are less than stellar. And the NE has some of the highest cost of privates of any part of the country. So a little school like Elon, unheard of in the NE 15 years ago, now has more students from the NE than from NC and SC combined. Why? NC and SC students are going to excellent and less expensive state schools. To locals, Elon is expensive. To students from the NE, Elon is significantly cheaper than comparable schools and the weather’s better. What’s not to like?</p>
<p>Virginia really is an anomaly in the NE category, with its well-developed system of excellent public schools. It must be far more difficult for students there to make the choice to go OOS.</p>
<p>@InigoMontoya I agree with you in every detail except for the idea that the weather is “better” at Elon. Some of us do like snowy winters, you know! :)</p>
<p>Wonder why is Virginia considered part of the NE? </p>
<p>Especially considering it has traditionally been identified with the SE/south and the culture outside of Northern VA is very different from what I’ve seen…especially if one goes further south and more rural. </p>
<p>Also, the NE classification in some publications sometimes excludes states like NY, NJ, PA, MD as they are sometimes classified as “Mid-Atlantic” states. </p>
<p>“What jumps out at me is that students from the northeast are over-represented at all but 3 top “national” universities.”</p>
<p>That’s not exactly a correct representation. They are over represented at most, averagely represented at NU, ND and Vandy, and then underrepresented at the 3 you mention - Rice, USC, Stanford. </p>