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<p>Well, yes, of course. That will come as a surprise to no one. The point is, however, that despite the claims of some elite schools to be “national” rather than regional in appeal, even the very best of them are still quite regional.</p>
<p>Here are the figures I have:</p>
<p>MIT: Northeast* 41.4%, Midwest 15.9%, Southeast 20.7%, West 21.9% (of which CA 16.2%)</p>
<p>Caltech: Northeast* 23.4%, Midwest 16.2%, Southeast 13.5%, West 39.6% (of which CA 31.1%).</p>
<p>Now there’a an obvious regional tilt here. Both MIT in the Northeast and Caltech in the West draw on their home regions at a rate nearly double those regions’ weight in the national population. What is perhaps more surprising is that the West is relatively well represented at MIT–or at least, California is well represented, at a rate exceeding its weight in the national population. And the Northeast is relatively well represented at Caltech. That makes these schools somewhat less regional than the Ivies, but only somewhat.</p>
<ul>
<li>I’m including the entire Boston-Washington corridor in the Northeast, including DC, MD, DE, and VA, all of which the Census Bureau places in the South. Virginia’s problematic because the northern Virginia suburbs are more like the Northeast and most of the rest of Virginia probably belongs in the South, but my guess is most Virginians attending schools like MIT or Caltech come from the DC suburbs, so I include it in the Northeast. That pushes the Northeast’s share of the nation’s population up to about 23%.</li>
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