<p>My husband and I are both originally from Pennsylvania. I went to Syracuse (undergrad) and UPenn (grad) and my husband went to Pitt. We have lived in Northern Virginia for the past 16 years. My kids seem to think that we live in the south, despite the fact that very few people living in the DC suburbs, even those on the Virginia side, are actually from here, let alone from the south. That said, my daughter is now a senior, and like most of the kids in her high school class of 500, wants to go south if they do not go to a Virginia state school such as Virginia Tech, JMU, UVA (which has the most southern culture of them all), Radford etc. I saw a list of the top 20 schools where kids from her high school matriculate, and almost all are south of us. The list included the University of South Carolina, Georgia and Clemson too. I was surprised, though, to hear how many kids ended up leaving USC, Georgia and Clemson after one semester, or after freshman year. Our high school is very competitive and nationally ranked, so it isn’t that they were not academically prepared. In speaking with the parents of some of these kids, I heard a lot of “they just didn’t feel like they fit in.” I know that when I was looking at colleges almost 30 years ago, and coming from Pennsylvania, I didn’t look any further south than Washington DC. There is a definite culture shift. For instance, at a lot of the southern schools, the kids get all dressed up for football games, and at some schools, for classes. I remember rolling out of bed and wearing pajamas to my 8 am classes! Many of the southern schools we looked at look are very preppy, and look like Vineyard Vines or Lilly Pulitzers advertisements. Some also still struggle with racial and religious prejudices, especially in their Greek systems. Some have the “old money” status issues. I don’t intend to lump ALL southern schools into such a broad generalization. I am only drawing from what we saw when we visited potential schools for my daughter, or from when the parents/kids of students at some of these schools said. Plenty of kids from here go south and love it. But depending on where you go, it’s still a different world, much like it might be for a scholarship student from a very underprivileged city who goes to Harvard. I think many schools in Florida manage to avoid these “southern school” stereotypes. Almost everyone I know who goes to UMiami is from the North. Ditto Rollins College. Just depends on the school I suppose.</p>