Popluation Centers and College Reputations

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I always thought that the colleges in the Northeast/New England were better known and better funded and more in demand because a larger percentage of the nation's population lived there. However, as the numbers below show, that is not the case. Anybody got any theories on why the Northeast has this reputational advantage and has this changed as the population has moved South and West?</p>

<p>From Wikipedia<br>
299,498,000 TOTAL US POPULATION</p>

<p>10,766,000 (4%) NEW ENGLAND
6,437,000 Massachusettes
1,322,000 Maine
1,315,000 New Hampshire
1,068,000 Rhode Island
624,000 Vermont</p>

<p>43,976,000 (15%) NORTHEAST
19,306,000 New York
12,440,000 Pennsylvania
8,725,000 New Jersey
3,505,000 Connecticut</p>

<p>24,787,000 (8%) MID-ATLANTIC
8,856,000 North Carolina
7,643,000 Virginia
5,616,000 Maryland
1,818,000 West Virginia
854,000 Delaware</p>

<p>53,817,000 (18%) SOUTH<br>
18,089,000 Florida
9,364,000 Georgia
6,039,000 Tennessee
4,599,000 Alabama
4,321,000 South Carolina
4,288,000 Louisiana
4,206,000 Kentucky
2,911,000 Mississippi</p>

<p>38,118,000 (13%) SOUTHWEST
23,507,000 Texas
6,166,000 Arizona
3,679,000 Oklahoma
2,811,000 Arkansas
1,955,000 New Mexico</p>

<p>64,800,000 (22%) MIDWEST
12,832,000 Illinois
11,478,000 Ohio
10,095,000 Michigan
6,314,000 Indiana
5,843,000 Missouri
5,557,000 Wisconsin
5,167,000 Minnesota
2,982,000 Iowa
2,764,000 Kansas
1,768,000 Nebraska</p>

<p>49,050,000 (16%) WEST
36,457,000 California
6,396,000 Washington
3,701,000 Oregon
2,496,000 Nevada</p>

<p>11,647,000 (4%) MOUNTAIN
4,753,000 Colorado
2,550,000 Utah
1,466,000 Idaho
945,000 Montana
782,000 South Dakota
636,000 North Dakota
515,000 Wyoming</p>

<p>2,537,000 (1%) OTHER
1,286,000 Hawaii
670,000 Alaska
581,000 Washington, DC</p>

2

<p>The oldest colleges - the longest heritages - endowments built over centuries - a culture that values education as opposed to getting a tan - many campuses clustered in a small geographic area resulting in greater public awareness and avid rivalries - less of an inclination to evaluate regional universities on the performance of their football teams . . .</p>

3

<p>Interesting topic. I agree with gadad. </p>

<p>I remember seeing on the news that the population had recently exceeded 300 million. I wonder if this additional growth (of about 500,000) has been evenly spread, or more so in certain areas.</p>

4

<p>Hawkette, I think we should also consider geographic area along with population in determining concentration. Afterall, back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, universities were founded as a function of population and distance, since back then, cars and planes were practically non-existant. </p>

<p>The Northeast, New England and Mid Atlantic combined are roughly the same size as the Pacific West Coast or the Midwest. The combined population of the Northeast, New England and the Mid Atlantic is 80,000,000, which is close to 30% larger than the Midwest and 60% larger than the West Coast.</p>

5

<p>I agree with gadad.</p>

<p>The Northeast was established WAY before the west coast. The Ivies are just old. Their age has allowed them to gain the prestige that they have.</p>

6

<p>Thanks for the good posts above. For those above who point to age and history as the reasons for continued prestige dominance by Northeastern schools, I struggle to see the connection between this and academic excellence and I also see an uneven application of this line of explanation. For example, William & Mary (which I consider an excellent state university) is the second oldest school in the country, but I doubt anyone would claim that it is nationally acclaimed in any way like those of the Ivy League. </p>

<p>My personal explanation is that this reflects the enormous power that media elites of New York City have to set the national opinion. The proximity to the Big Apple of the Northeastern educational powers and their postgraduate migration to work in the City (Wall Street or otherwise) has created a long editorial history that supports their educational and opinion framework. </p>

<p>Over the last two decades, the South and the West have picked up population and economically grown much more quickly overall than the Northeast and Midwest, but their numbers of Top 20 colleges still lag significantly and their national reputations don’t match this evolution. For comparison, look at the regions and their current relative population numbers and the number of the Top 20 National Universities: </p>

<p>Northeast/New England (54.7mm or 18% of the national population): Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, U Penn, Cornell, MIT, Johns Hopkins</p>

<p>Midwest (64.8mm or 22%): U Chicago, Wash U, Northwestern, Notre Dame</p>

<p>South/Southwest (91.9mm or 31%): Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory</p>

<p>West (49mm or 16%): Stanford, Caltech</p>

<p>(Note: I moved Johns Hopkins to the Northeast group and Duke to the South group as the Mid-Atlantic is a less defined geographic area.)</p>

<p>Has this population shift had any impact on the perception of these non-Northeastern colleges? One way to look at whether popular and/or media opinion has changed in accordance with this shifting is to look at USNWR rankings from 1991 and compare them to the current year to see if these non-Northeastern schools have improved their position. </p>

<p>Midwest
U Chicago (now 9th from 11th in 1991
Wash U (now 12th from 24th in 1991
Northwestern (now 14th from 23rd in 1991)
Notre Dame (now 20th from 25th in 1994)</p>

<p>South/Southwest
Duke (now 8th from 7th in 1991
Rice (now 17th from 16th in 1991)
Vanderbilt (now 18th from 19th in 1992)
Emory (now 18th from 21st in 1993)</p>

<p>West
Stanford (now 4th from 3rd in 1991)
Caltech (now 4th from 5th in 1991)</p>

<p>Who knows what all of this means, but I would normally expect population and business changes over the last twenty years to have some influence (both positive and negative) on the top colleges in each region and the prestige that they carry. However, to date, the top universities of the South/Southwest have not been able to leverage these trends into any major positive change in national reputation. Ironically, it seems that the regions that have grown the most over that last two decades (the South/Southwest) have seen the relative position of their top universities lose the most ground while the region that has lost much of its core manufacturing base (the Midwest) has actually improved the most. It would appear that the academic world more fully accepts those schools located closer to the NYC epicenter (and LA as a secondary center of influence) and also that those Midwestern schools have been more savvy players of the ranking game. Meantime, the top universities of the West have barely changed their position (although two big movers further down the rankings have occurred with UC Berkeley moving down and USC moving way up).</p>

7

<p>While population has shifted in the last couple generations, HS academic achievement has not. In general, SAT scores (and other key academic indicators) tend to go upwards as you move from South to North, and the top SAT states are along the Canadian border. To the extent that colleges tend to draw most heavily from their own regions, this would favor the Northeast and Upper Midwest too.</p>

8

<p>Well, there's a couple of things which skew the results of your analysis, Hawkette. You've divvied up the Mid-Atlantic schools but not the population, which inflates the perceived Northeast/NewEngland numbers by giving that region more schools but no more population. Also, your cutoff line for the schools you consider - a necessarily somewhat arbitrary decision - has further skewed your results. Why top 20? Just looking at the West, any other cutoff gives a very different picture. If you look at the top 30, the West has five schools (add Berkeley, UCLA, USC) which corresponds well with 16% of the nation's population. Top 50? Add five more - UCSD, UCD, UWash, UCSB, UCI. That's 20% of the schools for 16% of the population. Top 10%? 2 of 10, for 20% again. </p>

<p>Also, consider not just the number of institutions, but the number of students. In the west a lot of top students attend first rate, but huge, universities. Those in the Northeast, less so. An analysis of number of students in top universities compared to population would yield a result less favorable to the Northeast. Overall, your analysis is certainly affected by the "brand name" Ivy League, which has both history and marketing going for it. But all eight Ivy's combined have fewer than 60,000 undergraduate students - that's less than attend just three typically large California schools - UCLA, Berkeley and USC.</p>

9

<p>Another factor is public vs. private. In the midwest, states have place great emphasis on public education. As a result, the vast majority of students in the midwest attend state schools. There are not nearly as many private school students per capita as there are in the northeast. State schools, overall, are somewhat less selective given the fact that they must provide education for a large percentage of in state students. Many of the midwest state schools provide excellent educations but don't have the endowments of the northeast privates and often have budget issues with the state that can cause the some variations in the quality of programming. However, for many midwestern folks, the price is right and the quality quite good. </p>

<p>As has been discussed here quite often, people on both coasts, and the south to some extent, view the midwest as "fly over country" and don't pay much attention to things that go on here. Many people feel that private schools will alway be superior to state schools.</p>

10

<p>If we're talking reputation, then shouldn't we just be considering the peer assessment score, regardless of the other objective factors that determine the final ranking? (It is perception we're talking about in this case, after all.) Schools like Wisconsin and Texas aren't top 50 "overall" for undergraduate, yet have peer reputation rankings in the top 25.</p>

11

<p>Kluge,
All good and very valid points, but I am not as quick to accept the Northeastern college superiority over other regions of the country. Your Western examples demonstrate this. Why are there so many Western colleges ranked 20-50 and so few 1-20? I concede that my study group of the USNWR Top 20 schools is arbitrary, but I think that this is a large measure of the prestige that is accorded a school generally (and also here on CC). I want to challenge that thinking and see if it is reflective of the true quality of these schools. </p>

<p>I think you have hit on a key aspect of the comparison, which is that the West does not have many private institutions compared to the Northeast. As a result, these larger university settings perhaps dilute the student quality and the academic offerings are presented in much larger classroom settings. Furthermore, these public universities don’t have the financial resources to provide the same level of support to the faculty and to the undergraduate students. But a school like USC probably is underrated by Easterners and I suspect very strongly that the Pomona/CMC/Harvey Mudd et al group is underrated. </p>

<p>My personal belief is that the locals in these regions (West and South/Southwest) know very well the quality of the college students coming out of their top universities. Schools such as Stanford and Duke are pretty accepted nationally as peers to virtually all of the Ivy League schools (although I’m likely in a small minority accepting Duke as a peer to HYP). However, the next group of schools, while very highly regarded by residents and employers in their home regions and certainly at the same or better level than the so-called lower Ivies, has not reached the same level of prestige or acceptance on a national level. </p>

<p>Part of my conviction goes to the breadth and depth of students attending colleges today. There are only 13,300 spots available to incoming freshman at the Ivy League schools, only 30,000 total for the entire Top 20 National Universities and only another 10,000 for those going to the Top 20 LACs. But there are many more than 40,000 “top” students graduating from high school in America today and these top students are matriculating to a much broader universe of schools than ever before. I don’t believe that this breadth is recognized generally and appreciated for the quality improvement at many non-Northeastern schools.</p>

<p>JWT,
I object mightily to the PA scoring of USNWR and believe that the Northeastern schools benefit mightily from this. However, publics generally also benefit from this as their strong graduate programs do much to enhance their research reputations and thus how academics view them.</p>

12

<p>
[quote=]
JWT,
I object mightily to the PA scoring of USNWR and believe that the Northeastern schools benefit mightily from this. However, publics generally also benefit from this as their strong graduate programs do much to enhance their research reputations and thus how academics view them.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That's my point though... the basis of this thread is reputations. So shouldn't we be considering the top schools per their "reputations", rather than objective data?</p>

<p>I'd like to see your regional break down re-done, on the basis of all the schools, say, with reputation rankings 4.0 and above. Some would fall out and others would be added.</p>

13

<p>JWT,
My personal view on the Peer Assessment scoring is that:
1. the privates in the NE are favored over non-Northeastern privates and usually by a significant margin
2. the PA favors schools with strong technical/science programs
3. the PA favors schools with strong graduate programs
4. the PA favors public universities that have strong graduate programs
5. there may be a geographical bias depending on a school’s distance from a major urban and media center, eg, NY/LA/Chicago</p>

<p>The Top 20 Private Universities Ranked by PA</p>

<p>NORTHEAST (10 schools)
4.9 Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT
4.6 Cornell, Columbia, Johns Hopkins
4.5 U Penn
4.4 Dartmouth, Brown</p>

<p>MIDWEST (4 schools)
4.7 U Chicago
4.4 Northwestern
4.1 Wash U
3.9 Notre Dame</p>

<p>SOUTH/SOUTHWEST (4 schools)
4.5 Duke
4.1 Rice, Vanderbilt
4.0 Emory</p>

<p>WEST (2 schools)
4.9 Stanford
4.7 Caltech</p>

<p>The Top 10 Public Universities Ranked by PA</p>

<p>NORTHEAST
NONE</p>

<p>MIDWEST (3 schools)
4.5 U Michigan
4.2 U Wisconsin
4.0 U Illinois</p>

<p>SOUTH/SOUTHWEST (4 schools)
4.3 U Virginia
4.2 U North Carolina
4.1 U Texas
4.0 Georgia Tech</p>

<p>WEST (3 schools)
4.7 UC Berkeley
4.3 UCLA
3.9 U Washington</p>

14

<p>Thanks... this kind of makes it interesting for raising the point that are the Southern schools (and to a lesser extent the Midwest schools), really inferior to the NE and West, or is it purely a perception, as you say, for being in flyover country? The "average" peer reputation of the Southern schools is less than the NE and West, but is that due more to an inherent bias in the peer reviewers?</p>

<p>As an aside, it is also interesting that there are no top publics in the NE based on peer assessment. That almost does tend to support the idea of the elitism favoring the traditional privates.</p>

15

<p>gadad,
Re SAT scoring by state and by region, the stereotypes don’t really hold true. The South is equal to the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic is modestly better. Here are the facts: </p>

<p>1,393,217 Number of SAT takers in US (not including PR and Virgin Islands)</p>

<p>1021 Mean Combined</p>

<p>505 Mean Critical Reading
516 Mean Math</p>

<p>Area/State, # of test-takers, Combined Score, Mean CR, Mean Math</p>

<p>NEW ENGLAND, 96,413, 1030, 511 519
Massachusettes, 59,529, 1037, 513, 524
Maine, 10,895, 1002, 501, 501
New Hampshire, 12,354, 1044, 520, 524
Rhode Island, 8,130, 997, 495, 502
Vermont, 5,505, 1032, 513 519</p>

<p>NORTHEAST, 374,475, 1004 495, 509
New York, 153,518 1003, 493, 510
Pennsylvania, 103,445, 993, 493, 500
New Jersey, 82,990, 1011, 496, 515
Connecticut, 34,522, 1028, 512, 516</p>

<p>MID-ATLANTIC, 164,171, 1015, 504, 511
North Carolina, 52,690, 1008, 495, 513
Virginia, 56,336 1025, 512, 513
Maryland, 45,231, 1012, 503, 509
West Virginia, 3,508, 1029, 519, 510
Delaware, 6,406, 995, 495, 500</p>

<p>SOUTH, 195,626,1,005, 501, 503
Florida, 94,601,993, 496, 497
Georgia, 58,309, 990, 494, 496
Tennessee, 7,091, 1142, 573, 569
Alabama, 3,879, 1126, 565, 561
South Carolina, 23,556, 985, 487, 498
Louisiana, 2,622, 1141, 570, 571
Kentucky, 4,417, 1124, 562, 562
Mississippi, 1,151, 1097, 556, 541</p>

<p>SOUTHWEST, 154,986, 1009, 498, 511
Texas, 129,784, 997 491, 506
Arizona, 18,615, 1049, 521, 528
Oklahoma ,2,549, 1150, 576, 574
Arkansas,1,489, 1142, 574, 568
New Mexico, 2,549, 1106, 557, 549</p>

<p>MIDWEST, 119,541, 1091, 540, 551
Illinois, 12,694, 1200, 591, 609
Ohio, 34,970, 1079, 535, 544
Michigan, 10,405, 1151, 568, 583
Indiana, 41,568, 1007, 498, 509
Missouri, 4,266, 1178, 587, 591
Wisconsin, 4,012, 1188, 588 600
Minnesota, 6,106, 1191, 591 600
Iowa, 1,477 1215, 602, 613
Kansas, 2,545 1172, 582, 590
Nebraska, 1,498 1159,576, 583</p>

<p>WEST, 251,367, 1026, 506, 520
California, 191,740, 1019, 501, 518
Washington, 34,150, 1059, 527 532
Oregon, 18,357, 1052, 523, 529
Nevada, 7,120, 1006, 498, 508</p>

<p>MOUNTAIN, 21,279, 1113, 554, 559
Colorado, 11,806, 1122, 558, 564
Utah, 2,090, 1117, 560, 557
Idaho, 3,163, 1088, 543, 545
Montana 3,024, 1083, 538, 545
South Dakota, 335, 1194, 590, 604
North Dakota, 291, 1227, 610, 617
Wyoming, 570, 1103, 548, 555</p>

<p>OTHER, 15,359, 995, 492, 502
Hawaii, 7,821, 991, 482, 509
Alaska, 3,945, 1034, 517, 517
Washington, DC, 3,593, 959, 487, 472</p>

16

<p>Something else interesting is that the South actually has more schools - public or private - with peer reputation scores over 4.0 than the West. I didn't expect that.</p>

17

<p>those SAT scores per state stats can't really be looked at like the south and midwest are smarter</p>

<p>the people in those regions that chose to take the SAT are probably smarter and more dedicated on average. but most students take the ACT. in the east and west pretty much all students take the SAT.</p>

18

<p>Of course the South just has more schools than the West, period, so I'd assume that the number of Southern schools with scores under 3.0 would be greater, too.</p>

<p>Thanks for the data, Hawkette. The median scores state-by-state seem much more broadly dispersed than the last time I scanned them, a few years back. I wonder if some historically low-scoring states have been doing things to skew their data, such as gerrymandering which students take the tests at what times?</p>

19

<p>That's true benny - in the Midwest and the western part of the South, the students who take the SAT are most likely aspiring to out-of-region colleges.</p>

20

<p>On PA, I guess it is only natural to expect the academics to favor those schools with the history, but this really makes the PA a lagging indicator of college faculty. What schools are producing the best students TODAY? I’m pretty confident that the Northeastern schools don’t have anything on their competitors from America’s heartland and beyond, but you wouldn’t get this impression from the PA scores or from the USNWR rankings. </p>

<p>I don't think this is any kind of a left-wing conspiracy, but more a lack of familiarity with the quality of the students and the teaching that is going on in the other regions of the country. IMO, the South and particularly the West are making the bigger business news in America today and much of this is the result of work by graduates of schools in these regions. Silicon Valley is the prime example, but much innovative work in multiple industries is taking place up and down the West Coast and in Texas, parts of the Southeast (Research Triangle, Atlanta, Nashville) and in the greater Washington DC area. Whether that increased business activity and prominence ever translates into greater acceptance of the local schools by academics remains to be seen. </p>

<p>Still, the fact remains that the non-Northeastern areas are experiencing the greatest population gains and this will have ramifications for all Americans in myriad ways. Specific evidence of this shifting is seen in the following listing of the top 20 metropolitan areas in the United States and their relative population growth between 1990 and 2000. I have also listed the schools in or near those metro areas (or most associated with those cities). Granted, a lot of the students from these schools move to environments different than their local colleges, but the colleges themselves can often provide the best local/regional connections, eg, an Emory grad will likely have an advantage in Atlanta over the Cornell or Dartmouth grad. </p>

<p>Fastest Growing Metro Areas 1990-2000 and Area Schools</p>

<p>1 Phoenix, 45.3%<br>
2 Raleigh-Durham, 38.9%, Duke
3 Atlanta, 38.9%, Emory
4 Dallas, 29.3%<br>
5 Houston, 25.2%, Rice
6 Nashville, 25.0%, Vanderbilt
7 Miami, 21.4%<br>
8 Seattle, 19.7%<br>
9 Minneapolis, 16.9%<br>
10 Tampa, 15.9%<br>
11 Wash/Baltimore, 13.1%, Johns Hopkins
12 LA, 12.7%, Caltech
13 SF, 12.6%, Stanford
14 San Diego, 12.6%<br>
15 Chicago, 11.1%, U Chicago, Northwestern, Notre Dame (?)
16 New York City, 8.4%, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth (?), Cornell (?)
17 Boston, 6.7%, Harvard, MIT, Brown
18 Detroit, 5.2%<br>
19 Philadelphia, 5.0%, U Penn
20 St. Louis, 4.5%, Wash U</p>