<p>Ugg. No, I actually know what the phrase means. Go ahead and start inventing thing to save yourself. It really doesn’t matter to me.</p>
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<p>You completely misunderstood what was being mentioned. The student, who lives in the Virgin Islands, wants to come to the mainland for school. One of his requirements is a good transportation system (obviously because he can’t drive his car to college and probably because his parents and friends want to periodically visit). </p>
<p>You mentioned Blacksburg as a match. It’s not. In that scenario, DC, NYC, Boston, etc. is a match because you can fly from the VI to those cities, then take public transit from the airport to points of interest, such as grocery stores, malls, campus, international community centers, etc. When family fly from the Virgin Islands to your college for a visit, you need something to do with them. Visit the White House, go see the Statue of Liberty, etc. They don’t want to sit around a dorm in Blacksburg. </p>
<p>That’s the hallmark of an effective transportation system for someone who is flying to campus. While Blacksburg has a great transportation system for someone whose parents live in NOVA and who are going to shuttle him back and forth at the end/start of every semester and major holidays, it doesn’t meet the needs of someone traveling so far from home. </p>
<p>The issue of being an international student is because my frame of reference is international education, which other than passport issues, is no different than someone from the Virgin Islands.</p>
<p>What’s attractive to recruiters? Recruiters want the best engineers at the lowest price with the least chance to leave. As a student, your goal should be to find schools that attract recruiters because they produce the “best engineers” and not because they produce “low price” engineers or engineers unable to leave.</p>
<p>For example, when I recruited, I was very careful with making offers to MIT students because I knew I had to pay more and I risked having them leave in 3-5 years for a Harvard MBA. On the other hand, I was very liberal to make offers to Ohio State grads because I could pay less, I knew that had less opportunities, and I knew that they had a much lower probability to quit in a few years to pursue a top MBA. Good for me, bad for the Ohio State grads.</p>
<p>You also have to consider how recruiters view you. Especially in manufacturing companies, you need thinkers and doers. The doers are your basic operations people that crunch numbers and work on teams. The thinkers are your future managers and people that are on the “fast track” to the upper level of the company. The fast track candidates get the better and more visible positions, while the doers are shipped to rural towns. </p>
<p>If I want a bunch of doers, I’ll go to a large “good” college like a Penn State or Virginia Tech because I know that there are a bunch of above average people I can hire quickly. If I want a fast-track candidate, I’m going to spend more time recruiting and I’m going to go to a “top” college like an MIT, GT, Berkeley, etc. because that’s where I find the really excellent engineers. Maybe I strike gold with an absolutely outstanding Penn State student, but that’s by luck and not design. I’m not actively looking for that person at Penn State.</p>