@TwinMom2023 actually the South is very popular right now in the mid-Atlantic. Lots of kids heading to Univ of SC, Charleston, Alabama, Ole Miss and Georgia. And several schools in FL becoming popular for kids wanting to play lax being recruited by schools with newer programs. I think that outside of our in-state schools here in MD, in the last four years, Univ of SC probably gets the most applications/students from my kids small private h.s. In D17’s class of about 120, four are at Georgia, two at Univ of SC (tho many more applied) including the salutatorian who is in the honors college , one at Clemson, three at Charleston, two at Ole Miss, and at least 10 at schools in FL. My own daughter is in southern Calif along with another classmate (diff school) but I heard that girl, a recruited lax player, hates being so far from home and left recently just a few weeks into her sophomore year.
There are definitely kids who headed north to New England, but not as many.
From what I hear from parents with kids at other schools, this seems to be common. Our state flagship is hard to get into, so they head south, many getting merit to make it more affordable. New England is more popular here for those looking at LACs or smaller private universities.
S19 has five of his seven applications submitted. The teacher uploaded her LOR to the Common App and Coalition App, the school hasn’t done anything with the transcript request submitted on 9/25 and I don’t think they will do anything with it until the last week of the month.
He actually finds the Coalition Application easier to navigate, but I wish all of the schools used it for status updates. He applied to UMD first and expected to see an application status bar for his other two Coalition schools (JMU and Rutgers). No such luck, so I guess he needs to go through his email for messages about student IDs and portals.
One of his common app schools sent him an email telling him that they assigned him a student ID and his number is “None.” Very helpful.
Native New Englander here. I remember visiting the University of Richmond back in the late 1980s. Women on one side of campus, men on the other. Separated by a lake. Once I saw women dressed in skirts and pantyhose (PANTYHOSE!?!?!?) heading to their 9am classes, that was it for Virginia and any colleges south of DC.
Despite my Claremont Colleges phase (Hey, those brochures were nice! And California was blissfully so far away!), I applied to schools in New England and the Mid Atlantic. Ended up in the Mid Atlantic. Which was kinda south to my 17-year-old self. But I was able to wear sweatpants to my freshman year 8am class. So it was tolerable. So much so that I never went back to New England. LOL!
@4kids4us I know lots of kids from the Baltimore/DC area who are attending southern schools. South Carolina is super popular. And Virginia. Less pantyhose wearing there now apparently.
@InfiniteWaves I’m am laughing about the pantyhose. Just had our 30 year reunion at Northwestern and photos show us all wearing pantyhose. And we are seriously dressed like church ladies. I can’t believe it was cool to dress that way in 1988!
Love it @homerdog ! Pantyhose were definitely not a thing at Loyola College (now U) in Maryland back when I was a student there. For going out, maybe. But never for attending class.
I definitely never wore pantyhose at Penn State in the early 90s. I was more of a jeans, band tee, flannel, and Doc Martens kind of person.
As for S19’s geographic preferences, he doesn’t like the south or New England, and doesn’t want to go far from home, so his list is all centered in the mid-Atlantic with one midwest outlier. He considers the VA schools a little bit too southern for his tastes, although he is applying to two of them. South Carolina is fairly popular here, but I wouldn’t say there are any strong geographic trends. The kids who don’t stay in VA tend to spread pretty far and wide.
I don’t remember any girls at FSU wearing pantyhose in 1988. None that I dated for sure, ha. Church ladies !!!
Going south is a thing at our HS, lots of MD,VA, SC and some schools like UMiami, Emory, Duke. Some head out to CA.
Its also cool to go to CO, you know for legal weed and powder skiing.
@natty1988 , we have added some schools to the applying list that we haven’t visited. Try to show interest some other way, and then our plan is, depending on which acceptances come in, go and visit them later if they are a contender at that point. BTW, everyone I hear who visits UVM falls in love!
@InfiniteWaves , we visited U of Richmond this spring and did our little ritual of a drive-around before our tour. We saw 4 students (it was a little cool and rainy that day), all white males, 3 in slacks and ties and one in upscale athletic wear! It was so weird, the ties! Luckily, on our actual tour we saw students in “normal clothes” but our first impression was kind of like WHA? (And our guide admitted that hardly anyone was out and about because of the weather).
My born-in-Virginia-but-child-of-native-New-Englanders D19 said anything south of Winston-Salem was too far south. Absolutely no SC schools for her (“too many mosquitoes”). She is also one of the apparent few who did not fall in love with UVM (“where’s the rest of the theater facilities?”). Of course she is the same one who disliked a college in Massachusetts “because it is off the highway and encircled in trees”. :)) Her college list is mostly VA with OH, WV, MD, PA, and NC added in so visiting is somewhat easy.
This geographic discussion is cracking me up! I lived most of my youth and college in mid-Atlantic, New York and New England. Kids were born in MA, but we moved south when they were quite young. Both want to go back (“it’s too hot here and not enough snow”). There are always a few kids around here who want to go North and Midwest as the common perception is that schools there are more elite (debatable). The vast majority though are terrified of the cold and stay south. Plenty of good schools down here, but my D’s best options for academics and athletics are very large schools, so she ruled them out early on. A few kids, including mine, will pursue options out west, but I’m not sure how many actually go.
My girls used to be horrified by the idea of pantyhose, but fashion has a funny way of coming back around again! Oh, and there are still schools here where students do dress up a bit more than the average.
We live in California but my son is applying to Eckerd. He has looked at their instagram and Facebook pages and it seems like there are a lot of kids from New England and the Mid-Atlantic states there…I can see why, the climate sure is nice!
@TS0104 my son is applying to schools he hasn’t visited, but at some point we need to cut the list short! haha, plus it seems like one minute he loves a school and then he doesn’t care about it anymore!
Does anyone know if U. of Vermont and U of New Hampshire are matches or reaches for 2.9-3.4? Just wondering because my son is kind of interested in them…
At our private school in Southern California, I would say most kids stay in California, but a significant amount do go out of state, mainly to New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Not a ton of kids go to the South, though when they do it’s usually to Vanderbilt, Duke, Tulane, Emory, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the like. My son is at a private school that has a lot of wealthy kids(though many kids at the school are not wealthy) and a lot of kids apply to and attend selective colleges, though many also attend perfectly good colleges that aren’t elite and hard to get into. Plus, I’ve seen certain schools and regions and states fall into and out of favor with students. In my daughter’s class there were at least ten kids (including her) who applied to various schools in Colorado and about 5 or 6 kids ended attending schools in Colorado and the next year, no one went to school in Colorado, though about 4 kids applied! In my sons class it seems like this year the Midwest is popular, same with the Pacific Northwest and mountain west. Also, a lot of kids are looking at flagship universities in the South and Northeast…will be interesting to see where people actually end up!
@natty1988 If you have a kid that is a decent B B+ student and is active in school I’d say UVM and UNH are within reach, depending on test scores. However, there is a chance you might not get any merit at all, so expect full price OOS.
At our NE suburban HS school, the average kid that gets in has a 1300 SAT and 4,02 weighted GPA, so maybe a 3.5 -37 UW. That’s the average. Lots of kids get in with better stats, and plenty with lower stats. Most kids with a 1200 or higher got in, only 2 red X’s in a huge glob of green checks.
They’d probably like a kid from CA too. Good luck.
Ha! To this day I despise pantyhose. I’ll wear tights, but never pantyhose. There are plenty of people who still wear them though in NC - of course.
@natty1988 I feel like our list is changing daily too. It is so stressful. It is impossible to visit every school and have demonstrated need. I’m hoping that some LACs don’t really care, but I’m nervous. Zero colleges visit our school so I’m not really sure what to do.
We toured UNH and I bet you’d get a geographical bump for there and UVM.
Our school’s data for UNH and UVM is probably a bit off, as a lot of kids apply there every year. The high stats kids apply because they can get merit, the average stats kid applies because they think they can get in, and the kids with lower stats also apply in the hopes of getting in. A lot of kids in MA don’t want to go to UMass with 100 of other kids from their grade. A lot of them would rather attend UVM or UNH, but in the end Umass offers a very good product for the $$ and parents and kids realize this come April.
We’re in Iowa, and almost everyone stays close. In recent years, we’ve had one go to NYC for acting school, and one to Auburn. Other than that, it’s schools within a couple hours in Iowa/Missouri/Nebraska, and a lot of community college. DD wanted to be one of those rare ones that went somewhere new and different, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Sigh. I like pantyhose. Without them my legs look all blotchy and veiny. How do you wear a dress and dress shoes without pantyhose if you are older then 30? That’s not a rhetorical question. Seriously. How?
