<p>“My D passed on the opportunity to attend Northwestern Univ” - Exactly the same, although city was not a major reason. And we are in the same region in regard to temperature, we are about 5 hrs away.</p>
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<p>lol…if you think 50 degrees is cold, then you are eliminating most colleges.</p>
<p>I don’t think 50 degrees is cold. I thought the wind off of the lake at NU was bone chilling even when it was 50 degrees. I can only imagine how it feels when it is in the single digits. We live in an area that gets down to the single digits, but it doesn’t feel the same without the cold wind right off the lake. However, I imagine most kids and adults get used to it and are more than happy to attend NU. It is a really wonderful university!</p>
<p>This thread is turning into a clone of that thread from some months ago about whether students should take the weather into account when making college decisions. People from the northeast and the northern tier of the midwest can not understand how people from elsewhere could have issues with cold and snow, and people from the deep south don’t understand how people could take issue with heat and humidity. And the people from San Diego just smile.</p>
<p>^ 
^</p>
<p>"I don’t think 50 degrees is cold. " - This is exactly the point. While YOU do not think it is cold, many others do. And while NU is wonderful and my own kid had hard time deciding, there are many other wonderful univeristies to attend. And again, while weather andlocation is very important to some, it will have no input in decision making of somebody else. There is no general solution. Visit, decide for yourself.</p>
<p>I will step in to defend Chicago on greenery. We have a friggin’ huge park going right downtown! We have rooftop gardens galore and all the residential neighborhoods have tiny little yards, but they are grassy! Chicago is also extremely clean as opposed to the majority of other cities where I have lived. Also, one can live in Chicago without a car. Evanston is not Chicago, so I can’t say if a car is necessary there. </p>
<p>OK, I will go back to basically lurking.</p>
<p>I took a chance on Northwestern (coming from Miami) back in the early 80s, and my first winter featured 80-below wind chills off the lake. Was it pleasant? No. But I got used to it, and the benefit of going to such a great university in such a beautiful place with four lovely seasons made it worth it.</p>
<p>Part of the reason people from warmer climates decide they “can’t handle the cold” is that they are never dressed for it when they visit. They don’t own the various smartwool/polarfleece/down/underarmor/ugg apparel and footwear that gets us through–they bring the thin jackets and lightweight sweaters that, for them, are the warmest things they own, and then they wonder why they are so miserable. It definitely takes some time to acclimate to winter, but a big part of it is being properly dressed and remembering to always walk on the sunny side of the street. :)</p>
<p>P.S. No, MizzBee, you don’t need a car in Evanston. It is adjacent to Chicago and has every possible form of public transportation–the L (elevated train), a Metra commuter line, and buses.</p>
<p>“also coming from Miami” - We are not from Miami though, only 5 hours away from Chicago.</p>
<p>I went to college in Milwaukee, which is about a mile from the lake. It was insanely cold for 4 months of each year, but, looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing about it. Having lived in crappy climate places and in great ones, my experience is that the crappy places build character, offer richer experiences, and just make for a better time. A little suffering really does lead to higher highs.</p>
<p>“30 below keeps out the riff-raff.”</p>
<p>"There is no “bad weather,” only “wrong clothing.”</p>
<p>The nations most urban state isnt in the Northeast. That would be California, where just 5.6% of the states population is rural, with 94.4% living in urban areas. Oops! New Jersey ties those figures, but Ill let it stand for dramatic effect.</p>
<p>The nations most rural state isnt in the Midwest. That would be Vermont, where a whopping 61.8% of the population is rural. Second is Maine, at 59.8%. New Hampshire is also among our most rural states, at 40.8%. Of the nations 15 most rural states, 8 are in the South (WV, MS, AR, AL, KY, NC, SC, TN), only 3 are in the Midwest (ND,SD, IA), another 3 in the Northeast (VT, ME, NH), and only 1 in the West (MT).</p>
<p>Illinois (87.8% urban) is slightly more urban than New York (87.5%), which of course also means that New York is slightly more rural.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania, with a rural population of 2.8 million, has more rural residents than Illinois (1.5 million) and Iowa (1.1 million) combined.</p>
<p>By absolute numbers, Texas is the nations most rural state, with a rural population of 3.6 million, followed by North Carolina (3.2 million) and Pennsylvania (2.8 million). Rounding out the top 10: Ohio (2.6 million), Michigan (2.5 million), New York (2.4 million), Georgia (2.3 million), Tennessee (2.1 million), Virginia (1.9 million), and California (1.9 million). Thats 5 Southern states, 2 Midwestern states, 2 Northeastern states, and 1 Western state. (Im surprised Michigan is that high, because its not a particularly big agricultural state, ranking 22nd among all states in the dollar value of crops produced; Im thinking that figure must include an awful lot of retirees living in lakeside retirement homes).</p>
<p>In total numbers, the nations rural population is far more Southern than Midwestern. Some 26.3 million Southerners are rural, accounting for 44.6% of the nations rural population, a far higher percentage than the Souths fractional share of the nations total population. In comparison, 15.8 million Midwesterners (26.7% of the nations total, pretty close to the regions share of the nations population) and 10.8 million Northeasterners (18.2%, almost exactly equal to the regions total population share) are rural. Only 7.1 million (12.1% of the total) Westerners are rural. </p>
<p>Only 3 Midwestern states (ND, SD, IA) and 3 Northeastern states (VT, NH, ME) are less than 67% urban. In contrast, 9 Southern states are in that category. No Midwestern state is more than 50% rural; 2 Northeastern states (VT, ME) and 2 Southern States (WV, MS) are in that category. Every Western state is at least 67% urban except Montana (54%), Wyoming (65.1%), and Alaska (65.6%)</p>
<p>While Texas is pretty decidedly rural - you can’t discount some pretty major urban areas in Houston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Austin. It’s just that Texas covers a lot of ground.</p>
<p>^^ I never thought of Montana, Wyoming and Alaska (all >half “citified”) as urban meccas! “Ee-yep, you can’t keep 'em down on the farm once they’ve seen Casper … or Missoula.”</p>
<p>@bclintonk, just curious - where did you get your data (including definitions of rural and urban)?</p>
<p>^ U.S. Census Bureau, 2012 Statistical Abstract.</p>
<p>I can’t vouch for their definitions of “urban.” I’ve been to Wyoming and I didn’t see anyplace there I’d classify as urban. Montana, on the other hand, has places like Billings and Great Falls that sort of feel like cities. Small cities, to be sure, but they don’t feel rural. But I guess the take-away point is that those vast empty spaces are . . . empty. No one lives there, or practically no one. You might think of these as “rural” states because the overall population density is so low, but the fact is that almost no one lives in those vast empty spaces so the “rural” population is vanishingly small.</p>
<p>I found the definitions here: <a href=“http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/fedregv76n164.pdf[/url]”>http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/fedregv76n164.pdf</a> but not very edifying. I agree that while there are large tracts of land that are open, it’s probable that the people are more concentrated. It does seem the definition of urban has changed over time to count more types of towns.</p>
<p>The population density in DW’s hometown is two orders of magnitude greater than that of Wyoming, Montana and Alaska. Still, you can’t buy an ice cream cone in that town. Rural. No, Urban! No, Rural! Depends on who you ask I guess. It kind of reminds me of buying bread. Some people measure freshness by the date stamped on the plastic. Others believe foods with date stamps aren’t really “fresh.”</p>
<p>Diversity is in the eye of the beholder. In Boston we have big-league sports teams, museums, public transit, ocean and gay marriage, but not very many Republicans, evangelicals, farmers, or people who like to hunt.</p>
<p>My kids both go to school in the Midwest and we have family there. I’m amazed at the lack of geographical knowledge easterners often have about that part of the country. They’ll mix up the locations of Iowa/Indiana/Illinois, think Cleveland is near Cincinnati, and have never even heard of the U.P. They think my kids should get together on the weekends. No–their schools are 13 hours apart! (and they could be farther)</p>
<p>I hope the OP finds a new and interesting (to them) part of the country to explore for graduate school, and can educate the people there about the Midwest!</p>
<p>One doesn’t need a city at all for ‘diversity’ depending on the context of the usage of the word.</p>
<p>‘Diversity’ can include living in an area with ready access to mountains, ocean, deserts, hiking, biking, surfing, etc. In other words - ‘diverse activities’ which seems to be more in line with what the OP meant in the first place before this thread turned turned into the tangent of ‘my city is bigger and better and more diverse than yours’.</p>
<p>I don’t know why everyone’s so focused on cities and the bigger the better. There are lots of people, including me, who don’t care for big cities but do care for areas that afford lots of opportunities for diverse activities. One certainly doesn’t need a city the size of NYC, Chicago, LA, Dallas, Atlanta, etc. to live in a place with reasonable access to various restaurants, movie theaters, and even concerts, and plays. To some people, me included, it’s more important to me to be able to do some of the diverse physical activities they’re interested plus have reasonable access to those establishments I mentioned, which even medium sized cities all over the country (including the midwest even if one doesn’t include Chicago/Minneapolis) afford.</p>