<p>Wow, Whistlepig, how many more ugly stereotypes could you fit into that post? And you say Easterners are closeminded?</p>
<p>Don’t know that it’s “ugly.” Your spin on that one. But it is what it is. Can you get specific or do you simply want to make an allegation. We’re interested …</p>
<p>btw, closemindedness is not geographically based. nor is enlightenment or learning to think. Now, PC? that’s another subject.</p>
<p>In any case, will you share specifiics? Those west of the Hudson and beyond await …</p>
<p>Whistlepig, here are a few statements from your posts on this thread:</p>
<p>“But in truth, NEers can’t help the way they are. They’re victims of many things. Their voting records …isn’t that revealing?..Their excess proximity to others who share their ideas of heaven. Their too long commutes in man-made dioxide manufactured machines.</p>
<p>“And ironically, the NE “enlightened” kids are often the most closed-minded.” As one prep school counselor in VT once told us, “our kids all wear the same clothes and as far as colleges go, they think the world ends at the Hudson River.” An interesting observation that informs such a discussion as this.</p>
<p>“And often parental egoes as much as students’ …those of Mr. and Mrs. Microwave from Darien,Connecticut but whose folks, the Kettles, once farmed wheat in Nebraska, but that was too tough and too unpredictably so off we went to NE to get enlightened and modestly wealthy in terms of money with no time for the kids.</p>
<p>“And if they’re really lucky??? They just might get “adopted” by Ma & Pa Kettle some Sunday, and invited out to the farm for a real meal and a mind-broadening experience. And besides, is there anything really wrong with having a little more assurance that your dearest daughter isn’t at risk being raped each night as she walks alone to the dining hall? Or having most of the passers-bye on the little town sidewalk, say “HI” and really mean it?”</p>
<p>. . . I think we’ve covered a few of your offensive stereotypes: </p>
<p>–the typical NE parents “Mr. and Mrs. Microwave” are children of farmers who couldn’t hack it, so they went east to get rich and ignore their kids.
–Easterners are lazy people who don’t cook.
–Easterners live in a hell of long commutes and constant threats of rape.
–Easterners all think the same way (based on one observation of one prep school)
–Easterners could only be broad-minded if they meet some farmers.
–Easterners never say hello to each other. </p>
<p>You have quite a dystopian image of the way Easterners live, what their values are, and what they think about. Speaking as an Easterner, let me tell you that I live in a world where there are many different kinds of people, conservative and liberal, who dress and act in many different ways. The people I know have great family values, and I believe that statistics would bear that out. Lets not forget that the state with the lowest rate of divorce is not Minnesota but the much-maligned state of Massachusetts. The state with the highest high school graduation rate is not Wisconsin, but New Jersey. I even went to a New England prep school, and at that school I met people from all over the country and world who dressed and acted in many different ways. However, I do believe that in most high schools, public or private, anywhere in the country, there is a certain amount of homogeneity. You are seriously going to tell me that a small-town high school in Iowa is not going to have a certain uniformity of culture? The same would be true of a school in Maine or Alabama. </p>
<p>IF you want to know what Northeasterners think of Midwesterners, here is my general impression: that we are proud to share a country with them, that they are our fellow citizens and together we make up a great nation. I believe most Northeasterners would be surprised and disappointed with the resentful, bitter tone that you express. It also makes me wonder, why, if this is your basic opinion of Northeasterners, you would want them to come Midwestern schools. Would you really want to expose your children to people whose sons are all rapists and their daughters are all micro-waving, dioxide manufactured driving (whatever that means) conformists? </p>
<p>Whistlepig, if this is the kind of “open-minded” attitude Northeasterners could expect their children to get from their classmates at a Midwestern college, I don’t think it’s any surprise that more people don’t look at Midwestern schools. Luckily, I don’t think most people in the Midwest are so hostile toward their fellow citizens.</p>
<p>You two: Compare and contrast Easterners who move to the Midwest with Midwesterners who move to the East.</p>
<p>Let me do the honors for Whistle Pig:</p>
<p>The (formerly evil) Easterners who move to the Midwest become good.</p>
<p>The (formerly good) Midwesterners who move to the East become evil.</p>
<p>As a born and bred northeasterner, I believe NE’sterners have a definite geographic bias. But the same would apply to midwesterners. Let’s be honest here: there are more people in the northeast, the northeast is “older” than the midwest, and cities like Boston, New York and Philadelphia are loaded with old money, and regional biases when it comes to expensive private prep schools for privileged kids. Naturally, these “kings of the world” consider everything in the northeast to be better. But that doesn’t make it so. </p>
<p>I grew up with people who considered the midwest to be “fly-over” country, with the sole exception being a grudging nod that perhaps, one day, they might consider Chicago worthy of a visit. When I announced I was going to graduate school in the midwest, the derision among my co-workers was just incredible. These ignorant northeastern bigots actually considered graduate school at Seton Hall superior to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Why? Because Michigan was in “cow country” (to them) and Seton Hall is in the northeast. </p>
<p>Most northeasterners, including graduates of exclusive prep schools, want to go to school in the northeast becauase they consider the region superior in every way, therefore the schools must be better. Besides, mommy and daddy went to college in the northeast, and everyone at the country club went to college in the northeast. That’s all the proof they need.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is any doubt that northeastern private colleges, as a group, are more “preppy” than midwestern schools. Obviously there are exceptions. </p>
<p>I did my undergrad at a private university in New York City and hated every minute of it. I stayed for financial reasons. I left the region for grad school. I couldn’t believe how much more open, civil, tolerant, individualistic, and just plain nicer it was to go to school in the midwest.</p>
<p>I now have a daughter happily enrolled in a top LAC—in the midwest. She toured and interviewed at most of the top northeastern LACs (she grew up in the midwest and did HS in the northeast). She picked up the same negative (preppy, white bread, snooty) vibe from the northeastern schools as I did decades ago.</p>
<p>It is shocking to me how many posts I’ve read on boards for schools like Carleton, Grinnell and Oberlin where the poster claimed to be wrestling with a decision to attend one of those three or a school in the northeast, and the comment was always something like this: “yeah but, Iowa?” or “Ohio <sigh> I don’t know. What’s out there?” or “I don’t know if I want to be stuck in Northfield” — but they didn’t think rural Maine or rural Massachusetts represented the middle of nowhere. It’s just crazy.</sigh></p>
<p>I too am the born-and-bred northeasterner who moved to the midwest (and thought it was falling off the edge of the world to do so). While I still have some northeast bias, I would like to add some things to Plainsmen’s observations:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think people on the East sometimes have no clue that there is old money, and big money, in many areas of the midwest. They really think some of these places are cow towns. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But the midwest can be just as provincial – my goodness, you’ve got all the Big 10 schools, why would you go east again? Provincial is provincial. And California’s got the same thing, to some extent.</p>
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</p>
<p>Are you defining prep as in the modern-day usage (well-to-do) or in the classic, traditional preppy-handbook-circa-1980 vintage? Because you’ll find people answering to the classic LL Bean, topsiders, summer-is-a-verb in many cities in the midwest as well. </p>
<p>
</sigh></p>
<p>I agree. Honestly, these people have no clue that there are actual cities and everything. And law firms! And physicians! And places that need engineers and businesspeople! But, I chalk it up to the east coast version of hick!</p>
<p>I have the following worries about going to a midwest LAC;</p>
<ul>
<li>I’m an international student from the sub-tropical country and I’m worried that the winters will get too cold for me to bear. </li>
</ul>
<p>-I am also not much of an out-doors person (I enjoy it but don’t live for it) and I was born and brought up in Hong Kong so I am afraid that I will feel trapped in a rural college in the middle of nowhere. Of course, I won’t have a car so transport may be a problem. </p>
<p>-I also don’t drink, so I am afraid that I will be bored if away from the city. Are my concerns justified? </p>
<p>I would love to consider a midwest college otherwise, they seem pretty awesome</p>
<p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Would you be worried about the weather in, say, Boston if you were going to Harvard? If not, then you needn’t worry about the weather in the midwest. Aside from the very upper midwest, I personally see very little difference between most of the midwest and New England. And frankly this year it was Philadelphia that got socked by horrible snowstorms. </p>
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<p>Northeast LAC’s are not necessarily urban, and Midwestern LAC’s are not necessarily rural. An example of an urban midwestern LAC would be Macalester, which is in the middle of a large city (Minneapolis / St. Paul) … far, far more urban than, say, Colby College (in a small town in Maine) or Colgate (in a small town in upstate New York).</p>
<p>P and P …you’ve got it. </p>
<p>And I’ll come back to value, i.e. getting more for your buck. Iowa, MN, Ohio, Indiana and more …HAVE to produce for the consumer and market aggressively. It’s pure demographics. Kenyon, Grinnell, Denison, Carleton and the like MUST get some of those from the left coasts to matriculate to their Heartland. For Connecticut College, Mills, Skidmore, etc. to get a token farm girl from Missouri? Well, that’s a nice poster child, but a real anomaly/oddity. Conversely, any of the Midwestern LACs have plenty of prep kids from Jersey. A whole lot more likely to find an Obama devotee in Iowa than an out of the closet Palin fan @ Middlebury. </p>
<p>Reality, MW LACs are far more diverse, as well. They HAVE to be to survive and thrive. And they do. Just one more way they provide so much more for the consumer’s tuition dollar.</p>
<p>Plainsman, although I usually agree with what you write, the above post seems uncharacteristically narrowminded of you. Can we not get away from stereotypes of northeasterners being snobby and midwesterners being hicks?</p>
<p>I question how you can regard your daughter’s college, Oberlin, as representative of midwestern values when its website says that 44% of its student body is from New England and the Midatlantic vs. only 23% from the Midwest? </p>
<p>In addition, your example of snobbish easterners regarding Seton Hall as superior to Michigan for graduate school is contrary to the admissions data, which would show Michigan virtually never losing an eastern admit to Seton Hall and the vast differences in the number of top eastern students applying to the two schools. Michigan is far more prestigious in the northeast than Seton Hall is–especially so among the rich people you describe.</p>
<p>Yes, there are easterners who prefer to stay close to home and to people who they feel are more like them–just as there are midwesterners, who use east coast “snobbery” or 'unfriendliness" as code for “too many nonWASPS.”</p>
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</p>
<p>Sounds like typical provincial NE proclamation, and left-handed code for “East Coast elistist enlightened …”</p>
<p>Show us the hard data on the nonWASPS that would lend any credence to your implied allegation.</p>
<p>As you said earlier, “closemindedness is not geographically based. nor is enlightenment”. And, as you also said:
“Empirically, very tough to prove the point your asking. In real life, it’s as plain as your hand in front of your face.”</p>
<p>The vast majority and easterners and midwesterners have enormous amounts in common. I believe geography is of less importance than economics–the residents of the wealthy suburbs of Chicago, Indianapolis and Detroit have more in common with the wealthy suburbanites of New York, Boston and Philadelphia than either group has with the farmers of South Jersey and Iowa.</p>
<p>It is also very foolish to think of these regions as monolithic–there are huge differences in the demographics of Michigan and Minnesota or Maine and New Jersey.</p>
<p>So, yes, you will find some eastern snobs who only fly over the midwest (not that they spend time in Harrisburg or Buffalo, either) and some midwesterners who refer to the east–and especially New Yorl City–in ways which reflect bigotry.</p>
<p>Do you have empirical support for your claim that midwestern LACs are more diverse than eastern ones? And do you regard the students of Oberlin and Mount Union as both being typical of midwestern schools and Lycoming and Swarthmore as both being representative of eastern schools? Or even of Ohio and Pennsylvania schools?</p>
<p>“Do you have empirical support for your claim that midwestern LACs are more diverse than eastern ones?”</p>
<p>It should be simple (yet tedious) to determine via the Common Data Set postings of schools of each (and any) area. There should be ample financial, geographical, academic, racial, etc., data come to conclusions, if it actually matters. The burden usually falls on those making claims.</p>
<p>Here’s some data: According to College board, the percentage of students who are white/non Hispanic at top colleges in the Midwest and Northeast are:</p>
<p>MIDWEST:
Oberlin 75 % white
Macalester 69 % white
Carleton 66 % white</p>
<p>EAST COAST:
Williams College 60 % white
Swarthmore 42 % white
Amherst 35 % white</p>
<p>So . . . is it really true that you can make a statement that midwestern LACs are much more diverse than Eastern ones??? </p>
<p>Oh, by the way, I seriously doubt there are many people who think Seton Hall is better than Michigan. That’s ridiculous. As one of the Midwestern boosters pointed out, there are plenty of kids from NJ etc. at Midwestern schools, so maybe reports of their snobbery and unwillingness to travel to the Midwest are overrated?</p>
<p>^I’m sorry, but those rates for Amherst and Swarthmore cannot be true. Maybe the ADMITTED percentages are roughly thus, but the enrolled student percentages are not. Are you really telling me that Amherst is only one-third white?</p>
<p>Here’s the Amherst problem (from <a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/169053/original/2009%20Enrollment%20and%20Persistence.pdf):%5B/url%5D”>https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/169053/original/2009%20Enrollment%20and%20Persistence.pdf):</a></p>
<p>White, non-Hispanic 679 [39%]
Race/ethnicity unknown 360 [21%]
TOTAL 1,744</p>
<p>No one knows what “unknown” is.</p>
<p>Just want to add my two cents to say that what use is “diversity” if most of the students on campus think the same way, regardless of their race and cultural background? Diversity, as practiced on college campuses, is far more monolithic than college administrators and faculty would dare to acknowledge.</p>
<p>I think the greatest lack of diversity on campus is politically conservative professors–I have seen studies based on public records of political affiliation at various colleges and Republicans were below 20% at all of them (although business and engineering schools might be different). I think the second greatest lack is poor people of all races.</p>
<p>My sense is that students at elite schools are more uniformly liberal than students elsewhere–even htough they wind up working as bankers, lawyers, or corporate executives.</p>
<p>I think most conservatives aren’t interested in becoming professors. Research is the business of change, something that is more embraced by liberals.</p>