<p>That’s alright, PG. We “ivy obsessed” won’t be one bit less obsessed because of this finding or revelation. Btw, just because Midwesterners think their state flagships are top schools doesn’t make them more top than they actually are. It’s one other type of being out of touch.</p>
<p>Benley - this data says NOTHING about whether or not Northeasterners are more “aggressive” (for lack of a better word) in going outside their home region than people on other regions. To do that, you’d need the data set of where everyone went to school, not the composition of top college classes.</p>
<p>You’re trying to take a horizontal and conclude something about a rate, which you can’t do. Here’s an example - let’s say I found that 80% of visitors to Hawaii were from New York. That doesn’t tell me anything about the rate at which NYers visit Hawaii. For all I know, only 1% of NYers vacationed in Hawaii and the other 99% went to Florida. Horizontals are not rates.</p>
<p>You seem to think that the East Coast sets the standard. That “top in the Midwest” (or Texas or Calif) = regional, but top in the East Coast = national. I understand East Coast provincialism. I grew up there and go back frequently. But there’s just as much provincialism in the East as there is elsewhere. Witness the Boston - area hicks who seriously thought my suburban Chicago daughter must live among cornfields. They’re out of touch, too.</p>
<p>PG, it’s not just “the East” that rates Ivies and some other private colleges as top colleges. It’s the QS and the Times Higher Education etc that do. Other than a few public colleges like UCB, Michigan, I don’t see that many state flagships get recognized as top schools. So by “out of touch”, I don’t mean “out of touch with the east”… Btw, I dont think Chicago is representative of the Midwest. If other parts of Midwest were more like Chicago we might not be having this conversation.</p>
<p>I agree with you that overall, the top schools in this country are more concentrated in the east. I love east coast elite schools :-), I schlepped my kids there for college visits, my daughter is at an elite LAC in Boston, and my top two choices for my S were both east coast schools. I’m just saying – there’s still regionalism here. I’ll calculate the rest of the indexes tomorrow and figure out some way to summarize and share with all.</p>
<p>@bclintonk, 303
</p>
<p>When in doubt, follow the money. “Prestige obsession” can’t be quantified. Income can. Population is not as important as the number of families willing and able to pay tuition.</p>
<p><a href=“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_county_household_median_income_2009.png[/url]”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_county_household_median_income_2009.png</a></p>
![https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_county_household_median_income_2009.png[/url]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_county_household_median_income_2009.png%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>Suburban Chicago is deep green, as is the Northeast and the mid Atlantic states, and large portions of California. (I presume the government figures refer to mid Atlantic states as well as New England as “Northeast.”) The high income counties represent a significant concentration of wealth, i.e., future tuition.</p>
<p>I think people in Iowa are perfectly aware that Harvard is academically better than the University of Iowa. I think it’s just that they don’t value that academic superiority as much as people in some other states do. They are more likely to value other considerations. This is obviously different from people in California, many of whom are willing to go to school across the country because they do value what the Eastern schools have to offer. I also wonder whether this has anything to do with students’ perceptions of how likely they are to move to another state after college.</p>
<p>^^I also wonder about the impact on demographics and income. I would guess, and its only a guess, is that more Californians are first-second generation residents relative to midwesterners and southerners. Thus, not only are their roots not deep, but the parents of California high schoolers could very well have eastern connections/family, so attending school on the right coast is no big deal.</p>
<p>Second (and perhaps more important?), is the expense to attend the instate college relative to a NE private. At instate rates, UC is in the low $30’s, or just more than half of an NE private. So, for $25k more, one can attend a private colleges, with all the perceived benefits that it offers. But colleges in the SE can be much less costly instate than the UCs. Many kids with high stats – who might be competitive for the Ancient Eight – could attend some SE and midwestern public colleges for free. </p>
<p>So the economic discussion of the value proposition (NE private vs. instate public) can be much, much different between the regions.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s not about “accepting Northeasterners at a higher rate than kids in other parts of the country because there is more money.” It is that more Northeasterners apply to the Ivies in the first place relative to their place in the national population. </p>
<p>And Hunt is absolutely right. It’s not that people in Iowa think U of Iowa = Harvard. It’s that they don’t care as much about having to get “Harvard quality” to be successful in life.</p>
<p>I think where the apps get sent to is is greatly influenced by family culture. The higher the incidence of helicopter/tiger parenting, the higher incidence of apps go to</p>
<p>Just to follow up on my prior post, I think that people from some parts of the country–and people from some demographic groups, like recent immigrants–are more interested than others in the portability of a college degree–by this I mean how much it will help you in different parts of the country, or even in other countries. I think people in urban areas are more likely to feel this way, as well as people in areas where there is a lot of mobility in general. I suspect people in Iowa may be just less likely to think this way.</p>
<p>Sorry, on a not-smart phone…</p>
<p>… The more apps go to the so called prestige schools.</p>
<p>These families tend to be found in greater percentages on the coasts, in the suburbs of large cities. I think if there were a table of helicopter/tiger parent per capita you would probably see a pretty good correlation.</p>
<p>There are plenty of helicopter/tiger parents in those places-- but they are helicoptering about different things. I have colleagues in Dallas who talk incessantly about their 9 year olds trajectory towards varsity football (9 years old. And they’re worried about their position on a HS football team.) I have colleagues in Florida who talk about the junior high gymnastic rankings like it’s the be-all and end-all of existence. I have colleagues in Tennessee who worry about pageants and dance lessons and speech/voice lessons, and friends/family members in Illinois and Minnesota who spend MORE time than their counterparts on the coast driving kids to lessons and what-not.</p>
<p>A parent in Daytona Beach who thinks her child can be a Olympic gymnast is going to think the Ivy aspirations of my neighbors to be ludicrous (who cares what someone’s PSAT is anyway?) And my Ivy obsessed neighbor thinks that encouraging anorexia in a 9 year old, and spending that kind of money on costumes and makeup for an athletic event is ridiculous.</p>
<p>Who’s the Tiger parent?</p>
<p>I haven’t had time to analyze the spreadsheet with bclintonk’s info in detail, but here are some highlights:</p>
<hr>
<p>Super high concentration in home region (300+ index): Cornell, Penn, CMU, JHU, Gtown (note: I counted Northeast as home region for JHU and Gtown)<br>
High concentration in home region (200 - 299 index): Brown, Columbia, Dmouth, Hvd, Pton, Yale, NU, Sford, USC, MIT (ND comes in very close, at 195)<br>
No more or less concentrated in home region than elsewhere (index 80-120): Duke<br>
Duke is an aberration in general: Only school with FAR higher development in another region (NE) compared to home region (SE, only average). Only school on the list which is not overdeveloped in home region. </p>
<p>“Skewedness” notes:<br>
Most skewed: Only home region is highly developed and all other regions are below avg: Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Yale, USC, CMU, JHU, Gtown, Rice<br>
Only home region is highly developed, but one other region is averagely developed: Brown, Dtmouth, Hvd, Pton, MIT (West), Sford (NE). (Note: I took a generous definition of “averagely developed” here - but technically this is just a “shade of gray” relative to the previous bucket<br>
Has another region as equally developed as home region: Chicago (NE and Midwest), WUSTL (NE and Midwest), Vbilt (NE and SE), Emory (NE and SE)<br>
Has another region that is highly developed, though home region still “reigns”: NU (strong showing Northeast), ND (strong showing Northeast)</p>
<p>Does anyone have an idea on how to share this spreadsheet without having to “out” personally identifying information? I’d be happy to post it somehow. But it’s exceptionally clear that the Ivies are very regionally skewed and some other schools have a bit more balance.</p>
<p>Encouraging anorexia in a nine-year-old and spending that kind of money on costumes and makeup for an athletic event for nine-year-olds are ridiculous. And it’s also ridiculous to spend that kind of money on costumes and makeup for non-athletic events for nine-year-olds. Sorry, Daytona Beach and Nashville, you’re wrong.</p>
<p>JHS, I would argue that spending the kind of dough that my neighbors in the Northeast spend on SAT tutors and writing coaches and private college counselors is every bit as ridiculous, even though I think the goal- a college education at an institution which challenges and inspires their kid-- is a terrific one.</p>
<p>But definition of who is the Tiger Parent will vary based on your perspective. I find it funny that the parents who don’t have time to take their 6 year old to the library once a week miraculously find the time to haul a 16 year old to SAT tutoring-- for months on end.</p>
<p>
Well, here are some mobility data:
<a href=“http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-07.pdf[/url]”>http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-07.pdf</a> (map on pg 3)</p>
<p>Your hypothesis fits the data for the Midwest, but not so much for the non-CA West.</p>
<p>
I think the figures others have posted suggest that it’s primarily Californians we are talking about who are coming East for college in large numbers, so I think that is still consistent with my hypothesis.</p>
<p>I also think being foreign-born may be a factor, or having foreign-born parents–but I think there might be a big difference depending on where your family came from, and what SES level they are.</p>
<p>
But CA doesn’t show higher lifetime mobility than many other Western and Southern states. So there must be some other factor at work.</p>
<p>I agree with the immigration factor and the idea that original nationality matters.</p>
<p>^^^ Pizzagirl (re: post #334),</p>
<p>I look forward to your more detailed analysis, but my overall impression from the raw data (and looking also at state-by-state figures) is that ALL these schools are “regional.” The only difference is that some have regions that don’t coincide with the Census Bureau’s four regions. So Penn, for example, draws heavily from a geographically compact region, the Boston-Washington Northeast Corridor, that falls within the Northeast. But Duke draws mostly from a geographically larger Eastern Seaboard region stretching from Boston through Atlanta and all the way to south Florida, of which Duke is very near the center. Duke doesn’t draw very many students from the Midwest (except Ohio, which is geographically quite close) or from the West (except California, because Californians will apparently go almost anywhere except the interior South). But Duke also doesn’t draw well from the interior South; its 2010 entering class included only 7 freshmen from Alabama, 3 from Mississippi, 5 from Louisiana, and so on, in contrast to 209 from North Carolina, 72 from Georgia, and 146 from Florida. I contend that Duke is no less “regional” than Penn, but Duke just looks like an anomaly because its “region” straddles two Census Bureau regions, one of which, the Southeast, extends all the way to Texas and Oklahoma. Duke draws very well in the eastern part of the Census Bureau’s Southeast Region, but in the middle and western parts of the Southeast, Duke fares no better than it does in the Midwest and most of the West.</p>
<p>Similarly, Northwestern, Chicago, Notre Dame and WUSTL are not so much Midwestern schools (as conventional wisdom would have it) as they are Northern (or Northeast-Midwest) schools, drawing primarily from a region that extends from the Boston-Washington Corridor on the East, through the industrial Great Lakes states and up into Minnesota on the northwest, and down to Missouri on the southwest. This may sound too huge to be a “region,” but it’s not. The distance between Boston and Minneapolis or Boston and St. Louis is actually less than the distance between Boston and Miami, making the “Midwestern” schools’ Northeast-Midwest Region a little more compact than Duke’s Eastern Seaboard region.</p>
<p>Emory substantially shares Duke’s Eastern Seaboard region but draws poorly in the middle of that region, in Virginia and the Carolinas. It does better at the northern and southern extremes, however. And Vanderbilt has an odd boomerang-shaped region that extends from the Northeast through Pennsylvania and Ohio then arcs south through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama, with some reach into Georgia and Florida. So basically it overlaps Duke’s region on the northern and southern extremes, but otherwise tracks just west of Duke’s strength.</p>
<p>Anyway, that’s my take on it. You can see visual representations of all this, and look at school- and state-specific data, here:</p>
<p>[Where</a> Does Your Freshman Class Come From? - Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Does-Your-Freshman-Class/129547/#id=173902]Where”>http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Does-Your-Freshman-Class/129547/#id=173902)</p>