<p>You can talk to bclintonk. He aggregated it there, not me. I think classifying DE, DC and MD as northeast is fair; I agree VA might go elsewhere but honestly having tumbled the numbers, it won’t fundamentally change any conclusions. </p>
<p>re #54, no I didn’t expect you to take being close to a border into account, but by the time we drove out to Pittsburgh I felt like we were in the midwest. (I actually had no idea how close they were to West Virginia until I looked at a map.) And I think Pittsburgh has more the feel of a midwest city - so it surprised me that it’s big draw is still from the Northeast (though of course there’s no way of knowing how much of that is from western PA rather than the more east coast part of its location. But either way, that’s still confirming your analysis.</p>
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<p>It’s just puzzling as some geographical classifications of my own home state of NY would alternatively be classified as NE or “Mid-Atlantic” depending on the individual making the classification and VA would fit neither. </p>
<p>Cobrat, I don’t think Tisch creates spillover. From what I have observed, programs in the Arts are so specialized that people who know them know them- and people who don’t, will not. Does the average person know (or care) that the Master’s writing program in Iowa (of all places) is considered one of the top three programs in the US (and even folks in gasp- LA and NY are impressed by Iowa). Does the average person understand what RISD is? Does the average person understand that a degree in music performance is different from a degree in music; even on CC we have dozens of otherwise “engaged college consumers” who belatedly realize that there is no “direct entry” program to Yale’s school of drama as a high school kid, let alone your typical person on the street who cannot fathom the difference between Conservatory training and “just a music major”.</p>
<p>I think Steinhart is currently well regarded apart from what it takes to get in. I think it has created a halo effect on many other sub-par departments at NYU. Not to mention the folks who see NYU’s law school perpetually in the top 10, and assume that majoring in “fill in the blank” is a short cut to NYU Law school admissions (the school is highly rated and has admissions criteria significantly more stringent than most of its undergrad programs!)</p>
<p>As you well know…</p>
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<p>Pointless? Could you please explain why it might relevant to control the size of a state or the size of a population to the enrollment at a local college? Why not control the size of SAT super Scorers? And countless other metrics that MIGHT control the absolute size! </p>
<p>After all, WHAT is there to learn from this entire exercise? WHAT pertinent information is there to glean after applying various controlling elements? While it might a reasonable exercise in applied statistics, the bottom line is that it does NOT matter to anyone how a school “rates” in such an index! </p>
<p>Information is only valuable as it adds a dimension to a process. In the end, please share why knowing the national index of yours might help someone from Houston or Dallas evaluate Stanford vs MIT, Rice, or Wellesley? And, how it would work when adding UT-Austin? </p>
<p>I love numbers but do not get the point of any of this! </p>
<p>I get conflicting messages when I read threads like this arguing people are stubbornly provincial and colleges are all regional, and the arguments that college rankings like US News ranking are so pervasively changing the perceptions and “game rules” of college application. So, maybe only the northeasterners are perceptible to rankings, and not the smart midwesterners and football/basketball fans?</p>
<p>Re a post upthread from PG: I think you are right when you say most of the metropolitan areas across the country are more similar than different. The kid mentioned in my earlier post took a summer internship in a midwestern/southern city (It was the best opportunity he could get that summer and I did think that’s a “safer” way of having a taste of a different region). It turned out he enjoyed that experience tremendously, and felt quite at home. Granted he was somewhat “sheltered” while he was there and it was a relatively brief stay, but from what he described, the city was indeed a city like - a typical city we are familiar with. So maybe if we look closely, the “cultural differences” between a rural area in up state NY and NYC may be just as drastic as those between a small town in southern Illinois and Chicago.</p>
<p>"Granted he was somewhat “sheltered” while he was there and it was a relatively brief stay, but from what he described, the city was indeed a city like - a typical city we are familiar with. "</p>
<p>Did you seriously not think that a Midwestern/southern/western city wouldn’t be generally like an East Coast city? Aside from the obvious things (weather, accents, maybe some regional food specialties)? </p>
<p>xiggi, whoever said the purpose of this information was to help prospective students? It seems to me that the point is to dispel myths about how the northeastern elite colleges are so much more geographically diverse than those in other parts of the country.</p>
<p>Cobrat, the “northeastern” part of the country as a whole can reasonably be said to include both most of the Mid Atlantic states (NY, PA, NJ, DE, MD) and the New England states (ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT). In the case of this discussion, “NE” does not mean “New England.”</p>
<p>I think we all know that there is a big difference between Maine and Maryland. 
And that western NY and PA are much more midwestern, and upstate NY is more like New England.</p>
<p>The midatlantic is too small a region to measure, statistically. But MD, VA and NC are a type of region unto themselves.</p>
<p>No, it’s not too small to be measured, but it then begs the case - why stick the upper urbanized Midwest in with the rest of the Midwest, and why not break out CA separately from other western states, and blah blah blah and pretty soon you’re back to all 50 states! </p>
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<p>Exactly. Partly why I like the small midwestern city I live in is that it reminds me of the area in western New York where I used to spend summers as a child. And this is why (although I find this discussion very interesting) I don’t put too much stock in geographic diversity when evaluating colleges. A kid who has grown up in Scarsdale will have more in common with a kid from Shaker Heights or Menlo Park or Mission Hills than he would someone from Schenectady or Binghamton.</p>
<p>And PG, while you’re at it you may as well break up CA too. :)</p>
<p>Bclintonk will have to give me the raw data. It wouldn’t surprise me if CA over indexed but the other western states dragged the west average back down, but that’s just speculation. </p>
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<p>Well, my post was in an answer to a post that questioned the information shared by Stanford and another that called it pointless. Again, if there is a purpose to the presented exercise that is relevant to the … Nature of this forum, I am happy to read it. Or call it a point! </p>
<p>What is the point to dispel a myth nobody should give a darn about? </p>
<p>Isn’t this information really saying that a significant portion of applicants generally prefer to stay closer to home? Aren’t top schools always going to receive more applicants from areas that are close to them? </p>
<p>They do draw students from all over the country, but there is still a bias toward being closer. Many large state universities draw the majority of their students from their one state, let alone the region. </p>
<p>National vs. regional university is a relative thing. The National Universities have broader reach, but it does not mean that they do not have a regional bias in their enrolled student body. </p>
<p>It may be a myth that northeastern elites are more geographically diverse than their Midwestern/southern counterparts, but it’s not a myth that top northeastern elites are making greater recruiting efforts to pursue the smart kids from other parts of the country. It’s just that it seems they are not successful in attracting as many smart but provincial Midwesterners. Meanwhile, the northeasterners though they be just as provincial seem to be more willing to travel to another region for a prestigious college (admittedly some of them may choose to do so because they have not been able to get in the super elites in their region because it’s that competitive) so say the Midwestern elites end up with an equally diversified student body with less effort. The Midwesterners are just too darn smart to take the baits!</p>
<p>“Isn’t this information really saying that a significant portion of applicants generally prefer to stay closer to home? Aren’t top schools always going to receive more applicants from areas that are close to them?”</p>
<p>You could conclude that if we knew the APPLICANT pool. </p>
<p>PG: along with xiggi, I’m a little puzzled as to the point of the thread, although I am certainly enjoying it. Could you please say what the point is in your mind? Is there something you are trying to accomplish here?</p>
<p>Very first sentence of the very first post…</p>
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