<p>Hanna: sounds great.</p>
<p>Back to Grinnel and Dickinson. Grinnel: 11% international, 80% out of state, Most represented states: CA, Foreign Countries; IL: MA; NY. Dickinson: 6% international, 81% out of state. Most represented states: Conn; Foreign ; MD; NJ; NY. BTW Wellesley is 10% international: 90% out of state and most represented CA: Foreign countries; Conn; NY: NJ. Again I dont see a huge difference here in student population. Also BTW about 14% of the students at Dickinson do not submit ACT or SAT so I dont know how much the results are really effected. So I guess it does get down to the 2 or 3 points as Hunt suggests.</p>
<p>You’d have to see the numbers, but I suspect that “out of state” for Grinnell and Dickinson are quite different. I think Dickinson’s students will include a lot from nearby states; perhaps less true for Grinnell.</p>
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<p>There’s my point right there! </p>
<p>Ignoring foreign students for the moment …
Of the 4 most represented states (besides home-state) for Grinnell,
only 1 of the 4 is contiguous (Illinois). The others are on the west and east coasts! That signifies a national appeal / range!</p>
<p>Whereas for Dickinson,
of the 4 most representated states (besides home-state),
they’re all clustered together around PA. 3 are contiguous (NY, NJ, MD) and the remaining one (CT) is pretty close. That signifies regional appeal.</p>
<p>I’ve worked on the West Coast, the East Coast and Chicago. That’s right, Kid, I’ve even made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs. Grinnell is well known and respected, and has been for years. I’d actually never heard of Washington U. St. Louis until I worked a year at the Batavia Labs, where there are quite a few U. Chicago and Washington U. doctorates and grads. Smart folks at Washington U. but you’d think they’d move it back to Washington state.</p>
<p>Looking at the SAT distribution on the common data set, Grinnell has a much higher percentage of enrolled students who scored in the 700+ range than does Dickinson (more than 1/3 of students at Grinnell score in that range (nearly 40% for CR, while only 20% do at Dickinson).</p>
<p>Grinnell also has much more diversity in general: about 64% white to Dickinson’s 78% white (note: I include “not specified race” as white, but do the same for both schools). </p>
<p>Grinnell also has 74% of students receiving need-based aid, while Dickinson has 57%.</p>
<p>Hunt You may be right as to the geographic make up but is it a significant factor or is the 2-3 points the tipping point. As to PG I see your point but I also included the Wellesley example. You are most likely to see international, Conn, Ny and NJ at both W and Dickinson. Again its degree and is it a significant factor.</p>
<p>“TW about 14% of the students at Dickinson do not submit ACT or SAT so I don’t know how much the results are really effected.”</p>
<p>Since we can be confident that all 14% would be in the bottom half of the distribution had they reported their scores, there’s a meaningful effect. They’re reporting a 25th percentile that’s really the 30th or 35th percentile. That’s room to hide a lot of weak scores. (Not weak students, necessarily – just weak scores.)</p>
<p>California coming first for Wellesley is a pretty big difference between its population and Dickinson’s.</p>
<p>According to information on Dickinson’s Institutional Research page, 67% of students come from the following states: PA, CT, MA, NY, MD and NJ. I didn’t add up all the numbers; just took the states with the largest representations. The next highest represented state is CA, with 105, and all other states are below that number. This is the full student body for 2011-2012.</p>
<p>Grinnell’s fact book divides up its geographic distribution by region. The midwest (what it terms “west and east north central”) is 47.5%. The rest are fairly evenly distributed around the country, with the highest being the Pacific. This data is first -time first-year enrolled “pooled data” from 2006-2010.</p>
<p>I realized this isn’t apples-to-apples data from the schools, but I’m working with what I can find.</p>
<p>Re: post# 205-
Well its interesting what our frames of reference are. I’ve been very familiar with Wash U for probably 40 years, but had no clue what the Star Wars reference was all about until I looked it up.</p>
<p>The school my daughter graduated from is very well known in the area in which it is located. Students from that school’s business and engineering programs are peppered all over the Silicon Valley where it is located. The school is ranked number 2 among Masters Universities in the west…something we didn’t know when she chose to attend. DD chose the school due to its strength in the sciences/engineering and because she was able to play her musical instrument in the college orchestra…oh…and she liked the climate.</p>
<p>Here on the east coast, most folks think this private university is part of the UC system. Most say they didn’t know there was a UC in that town. To say that the school is virtually unknown in this area is an understatement. HOWEVER, that does not diminish the fine quality of this particular school (Santa Clara University, in case anyone is wondering). It helps that the school is ABET accredited for the engineering.</p>
<p>I should add…the only reason WE knew about this school was because it came highly recommended from another poster on this forum.</p>
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<p>Depends on what you value. As I said, all else being equal, <em>I</em> personally value very highly a student body that is not just made up of students from the home state / surrounding states.</p>
<p>Here’s F&M’s geographic distribution for class of 2015:
Pennsylvania 25.1% New Jersey, New York 28.1% Maryland, Delaware, District of Columbia, Virginia 8.7% New England 15.7% Other states 9.5% Foreign Countries 12.9%</p>
<p>Re its SAT scores: 33% of enrolled students did not submit scores, so one might assume that the mid-50% range is even lower than reported. Of those with scores over 700, 18% had them in CR, and 30% in Math.</p>
<p>I don’t see a geographic breakdown for Gettysburg, but the students with scores above 700 are 18% CR and 14% math for class of 2015. Gettysburg is also test-optional, but didn’t list on the CDS how many students reported their scores…</p>
<p>PG in your prior posts you made it clear that Grinnell/Carleton group is in a different band than Dickinson/Gettysburg group. Is that because of your personal preference of students beyond the home and surrounding states. Or do you agree with Hunt that 2-3 points is significant. I guess are the two groups " all else being equal"?</p>
<p>A few thoughts, having read many if not all of these posts:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If we are talking wide differences in Pizzagirl’s bands, I think qualitative differences are tangible and likely. Mythmom compares Stony Brook and Williams (a pairing I happen to be familiar with), where the average student at one is clearly very, very different from the other. But Grinnell and Dickinson? Much less clear, in my mind.</p></li>
<li><p>Should a student choose a school because its ranking is higher and somehow employment prospects are likely to be higher as well? Perhaps, though dependent upon the career a student is looking to pursue. A physical therapy degree from Northeastern for a student who wants to be a physical therapist is worth its weight in gold; for that student, perhaps Grinnell just doesn’t cut it. For a young intellectual, Yale might truly offer an advantage over Dickinson, without meaning to slight all the students at Dickinson.</p></li>
<li><p>Even knowing something about these relative differences between colleges, haven’t you older folks experienced what I have in my life? That the further along I get in years, the more frequently I am struck by the wide variety of education in the people I most view as successful in their careers. Perhaps you know someone who has created a high end construction firm, building houses for the uber-wealthy and becoming very well known him(or her)self in the process? Or the woman down the street who created a string of hip restaurants? Really bright people doing creative things without pedigree degrees? I certainly do and I know Ihave to shake off a little of my inborn and inbred snobbishness about education each time I do.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I am not anti-intellectual in the slightest, and I wouldn’t be reading these posts if I didn’t have some odd interest in the game of American higher education. But I really do believe at this point that the right way for a kid to choose his college has to be fit and an honest bet on the future. That kid’s fate is not sealed by the decision, but heading in the right direction never hurts.</p>
<p>Where people are from is not a big issue for me (or my child) at all–rather, we have tried to look at the the variety of interests and backgrounds represented by the kids at the colleges we have considered. Where a student comes from is an accident of birth–who he or she becomes is far more important, IMO.</p>
<p>Both my kids have already experienced being “geographic minorities” during summer programs in other states (CA and PA) and, apart from the occasional teasing about the way they talk or the shoes they wear or the generalizations about their midwestern roots, it hasn’t made much difference after they connected over shared values and interests. Also, any of us who are sending our kids far away for college should hope like crazy that they have a roommate or make a good friend who comes from within driving distance. There’s nothing better than occasionally going to someone’s home for the weekend, having a home-cooked meal, doing a little laundry and being with parent-types, younger siblings and maybe a dog or two.</p>
<p>midlifedad: AMEN! Extremely well said.</p>
<p>Haha…sorry to keep posting but just saw this in the “latest posts” and thought it was quite appropriate to the geography/perceived status discussion.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/625274-why-people-northeast-so-ignorant-stanford.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/625274-why-people-northeast-so-ignorant-stanford.html</a></p>
<p>Omg OP:</p>
<p>This thread is a Looong answer to your original question! Over 200+ posts and counting! Getting back to your original question, what has your child decided to do for college next year? Are you still deciding or have you made up your minds? Good luck! :)</p>
<p>@ chocchipcookie: no decision yet. Decision has to be made by Friday. I never imagined that my original post would receive so many responses!</p>