There is a correlation between location and fit due to student body and college town. A student from a metropolitan NYC area might not feel comfortable with a college in a rural deep south area.
When parents do not put restrictions on locations, in a way they have a certain level of confidence that their kids share the same value as them thus kids will not consider a school that is outside their comfort zone. If an outlier indeed occurs, I am curious if the parents’ inner restriction will kick in.
Keep in mind that geographic restrictions sometimes function as admissions restrictions.
In my area there is a lot of “bunching” due to the phenomenon Oldfort describes. Why apply to Rice when JHU is a train ride away? Why apply to Pomona when a parent can drive a kid to and from Amherst or Williams in a day? Who needs Reed when you can easily get to Bard, Sarah Lawrence, or Swarthmore?
BUT- understand that if your kid is an over-represented “nice well rounded kid” at all the colleges on his/her list, he or she may be a “wish we had more of those” at a college out of your region. It used to be that just the tippy top kids had all the same colleges on their lists- but now it’s trickled down to the B+ students AND the solid C students. Parents are aggravated that colleges like Binghamton, U Maryland, and Delaware are no longer rock solid safeties (and sometimes reaches, depending on the kid) but by only applying in your region you are just exacerbating the problem (for your kid). If you are willing to apply to Maryland out of state (a very popular choice for New England kids), then heading further South or West may be the way to go.
Yes, distance, travel costs, etc. All need to be considered. But I just had a conversation with a parent lamenting that the GC didn’t think the kid was going to get into University of Rhode Island (they would be full pay, out of state) which the kid thought was in the safety/matchy arena. Well- there are 49 other states…kid for sure isn’t getting into Virginia, U Conn Storrs, Michigan, UT or Berkeley… but there are a bunch of other states happy to have a full pay out of state kid at the flagship. This kid is now sending out a bunch of applications to the next tier of New England colleges- which if that works is a great solution, but it’s all seeming a little random now. Many of them don’t have the desired program, some of them are actually hard to get to when you factor in travel and poor public transit, and some of the costs are really going to exceed the budget.
We are located in Chicago suburbs and D18 generally applied to a variety of midwest schools within 7 hours drive. “Hates flying” But kind of as a lark, she added Denver and U San Diego applications–fun to think about those locations. Got in everywhere, heart kind of belonged to UIowa, but wanted to go to a “location” accepted-student visit. I told her to pick one (cuz I knew she didn’t really plan to go that far away). We flew to San Diego mid-April, thanks to dramamine.
That’s all she wrote! Once we stepped onto the gorgeous USD campus and saw the happy breezy students studying outdoors, ocean in the distance, resort-like facilities… After an especially long-lasting Chicago winter…
So much for criss-crossing the midwest checking out Big Ten and cozy LACs. She is now a happy Torero.
My friend’s son went to one of those tippy top private schools in NYC. He was encouraged to apply to Rice by his GC because he would almost be guaranteed admission. The GC said he had a meeting with an AO from Rice and wanted to “work together” to get more kids from NYC, especially from their private school.
The B+ students mostly applying to the local state university, and the solid C students mostly applying to the local community college is not something that has changed in decades. Cost may be the main factor in this location choice, since they may not be able to afford living expenses that are more expensive than living with parents (or other relatives) and commuting, and the students’ academic credentials are not strong enough to pick up merit scholarships or admission to colleges with good financial aid.
Perhaps it is different in the forum demographic, where many parents can afford to send the kid to an expensive private or out-of-state public at list price without financial aid or scholarships, so even a B+ or solid C student can get the “college experience” that is not commuting to the local state university or community college.
UCB- who do you think is going to Hofstra, Pace, University of New Haven, Adelphi, LIU, Stonehill, Sacred Heart, Marist, Seton Hall ,Siena? Yes, some kids commute. But many are dorming, and although some kids ARE from outside the region, many are kids who are paying full freight, live within a three or four hour drive, and for sure, could have gotten into a more academically challenging environment if they’d been willing to apply outside the region. The area has at least a dozen public U’s with more rigorous academics, likely cheaper, although without some of the amenities (Baruch, Queens, Lehman,- nobody goes there for the rah-rah or the fancy dorms… but for the money, a more rigorous academic experience than some of the privates that these kids are ending up in.)
Of course many kids- A students, B students, C students commute. But for a kid who is going to be paying for a dorm, finding a dorm further away can broaden the choices from an academic perspective because there are some “easier” admits further from home.
I know kids who get into Wake Forest, Davidson, Vanderbilt and schools of that caliber from parts of the country that in no way could get into their “counterparts” in their own region. Ditto Beloit, Lawrence, Rhodes…these kids look “shinier” outside of their own neighborhoods and are not competing with the same 15 kids from their HS with identical GPA’s and EC’s.
Yes, the forum demographic with parents who can pay list price at a private school. But how many students is that compared to the number commuting to their local state universities and community colleges?
@1NJParent , sometimes location can be a critical pull factor too, not just a potential exclusion. An example is studying in DC for students in the politics field, because of the incredible year-round internship opportunities on offer to students there.
@SJ2727 Yes, location can certainly contribute positively to an overall evaluation. Just as Hometown U benefits from its proximity to one’s home, Stanford benefits from its location in SV; Columbia and NYU benefit from their location in NYC, etc. It makes perfect sense to apply to these schools if you want to proximity to home, SV, or NYC. The issue is still, though, whether to exclude other colleges because of their locations.
We didn’t put any restrictions, but my son did not want anywhere in the south, he didn’t want anywhere too close to us and he didn’t want anywhere too conservative or too rural…
@1NJParent for D19, one college is definitely further down on the list than it would be all else equal, because of its location. Not a dealbreaker location, but less than ideal.
D19 is very resistant to being too far from being in the thick of an urban center. Even Brandeis (which she didn’t like for other reasons) was considered “too far” from Boston… so that’s her attitude to location. With all her other options being an easy flight from our closest hub, we didn’t need to set limits.
We put restrictions on distance for financial reasons…then again we didn’t forbid our kids from applying or attending schools far away…we just told them that the fin aid had to work out and we didn’t want them to have a ton of debt from going to a school 3,000 miles away.
Also, I think a lot of this depends on the kids and the families…we aren’t the type of parents who would drop in unannounced or come to visit all the time, even if the kids were really close by, my husband and I work full time, we simply don’t have the time to visit them all the time. And our kids are busy with studying and activities! Also, our kids aren’t the type to come home every weekend and since my husband and I are paying for them to live on campus, we want them to stay at school and make the most of their time there…I’m not paying for them to come home all the time…
Then again, i know kids who come home often and parents go to visit often (even when the kids are quite far away) and they all seem to be fine with this. Different strokes for different folks…
You might be surprised if you pop into the various B student threads here - there’s absolutely merit and financial aid for B students at private colleges. My S was one such (HS gpa was 2.98) and we paid less for his private college than we would have at any of our public Us.
His offers were not unusual when I was hanging out in those threads back then.
Same here, @OHMomof2. My older daughter was a shaky B+ student and got sufficient merit and need-based aid to attend a school 2,000 miles from home. We would have spent about the same amount out of pocket for her to go to our state flagship. The latter is a great university but also very large, and she wanted to go to a small school. She did, and she thrived.
We put no distance restrictions on the kids, but did let them know that travel home at holidays would require intentional planning, and would have to be payed for well in advance of travel. No last minute calls home saying the initial alternate plans at holiday/break fell through and they’d be the only kid on campus. Tough.
We have caved only once on that, and kid - the one we knew would be the one to push - apologized upfront.
Were in the Northeast where there are many excellent colleges to choose from. We told our kids that if they wanted to fly to a college (with the extra.costs, hassles) they would have to explain to us why that school was better than the ones we could drive to (ex.a better program for their interests, better merit aid etc.). Our S did attend a grad school halfway across the country (a flight away) and we had no issue as the grad program he attended was top 5 in the country in his disciple.
We also live in the northeast. One of our kids went to college in CA (near both a relative and close friend). Yes, there are plenty of colleges in the northeast. But frankly, that CA school was better than any my kid would,have gotten into around here…she brought them some geographic diversity.
Re: urban vs rural. We live in a rural,area. Both of our kids went to urban colleges, and grad schools.
My older son only cared about CS programs and overall academics in STEM. He applied to schools on both coasts and ended up at Carnegie Mellon. Younger son thought there were plenty of schools on the East Coast that suited him just fine, so why look further? He did end up applying to U of Chicago and came very, very close to attending. He absolutely refused to look at any school in NYC. Not because it’s too close, but because he hates the city.
The 2016 HERI/CIRP survey indicates that 62.1% of freshmen at 4 year colleges are attending a college more than 50 miles from home.
0-5 miles – 5.4%
6-10 miles – 7.6%
11-50 miles – 24.9%
51-100 miles – 15.1%
101-500 miles – 29.7%
501+ miles – 17.3%
Living at home and commuting is much less popular than living on/near campus.
74.8% College residence hall
18.5% At home
3% Other private home/apartment/room
2.5% Other campus student housing
0.8% Fraternity or sorority house
0.3% Other
Perhaps 74.8% of the frosh at the 250 or so listed colleges in the survey live in the dorms. But are those colleges the representative of all four year colleges?
and he didn’t want anywhere too conservative or too rural…