Regionalism in the Northeast?

<p>b clinton…your first sentence. contradictory statement</p>

<p>^ collegebound, what’s contradictory? This thread was about Northeasterners and their apparent preference for schools in the Northeast. Another poster started talking about schools in the Boston-Washington corridor, and I was merely pointing out that many of the leading schools in the Northeast are not, in fact, in the Boston-Washington corridor, which is a geographical subset of the Northeast. Where’s the contradiction?</p>

<p>As someone who grew up in the Northeast and did subscribe to that famous New Yorker poster mindset, I think there is a lot of provincialism in the Northeast. It’s amusing how some think that it’s “provincial” for the smart midwestern kid to attend their local Big 10 flagship (which is a pretty good deal for the money!) and not go east or west, yet they themselves are horrified at the thought of going anywhere other than the Northeast and <em>maybe</em> SF, LA or Chicago. Look at the reception that WashU gets. It’s easily equivalent to a lot of top schools, yet it’s in St. Louis, which an unsophisticated, ill-traveled Northeasterner would think is a cow-town. If you moved it to Chicago, it’d be Northwestern, quite frankly.</p>

<p>More than half of the US News top 25 and top 50 national universities are NOT in the Northeast (13 of 25 and 29 of 50 respectively). The Northeast certainly has the largest concentration of top colleges and universities, so many that it’s generally pretty easy for Northeasterners </p>

<p>the emphasis on not kinda tosses around your main idea</p>

<p>^ Well, there are two main ideas here, cb. One is that there are far more top colleges in the Northeast than in any other region. The other is that there are far more top colleges in other regions than many Northeasterners suppose—in fact, more not in the Northeast than in that region. Is that so difficult?</p>

<p>Well, I like big cities and I don’t want to have to fly to the west coast. I definitely don’t like farm country, rural areas, or even the suburbs. I don’t want to go to school anywhere in the Bible Belt. So… yeah. Choices outside of the Northeast are generally limited to:</p>

<p>Northwestern (too pre-professional)
Chicago (core is a no-no)
Rice (like and applying)
Emory (nothing special)
Vanderbilt (too white, even if only in reputation)
WUSTL (like and applying)</p>

<p>I don’t want anything public or anything smaller than 5,000 (with one exception) students, so… that doesn’t leave much outside of the Northeast.</p>

<p>^ applicannot,
OK, those are pretty stringent criteria. So your school must be urban, private, 5,000 + students, no core, not pre-professional, not “too white.” So what does that leave? Well, Harvard, I guess, if you count Cambridge as urban—I would. BU. Brown. Yale, though counting New Haven as “urban” is a stretch. NYU. Johns Hopkins. Georgetown. GWU. American, maybe. U Rochester (I guess Rochester counts as “urban,” but yecchh!). RPI (I guess Troy counts as “urban,” but yecchh!). And that’s about it, right?</p>

<p>If you’re gonig to apply your own criteria consistently, then:
Dartmouth = too rural
Cornell = too rural
Columbia = “core is a no-no”
Penn = “too pre-professional”
Princeton = too suburban (or too rural, take your pick)
MIT = too pre-professional (what could be more pre-professional than all those engineers?)
Tufts = too suburban
Brandeis = too suburban
BC = too suburban
Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore = too small & too rural (A & W) or too suburban (S)
All other NE LACs = too small</p>

<p>Geez, that leaves you with an interesting but very odd list ranging from the practically unattainable to the profoundly pedestrian. Frankly, though, I don’t think you really mean it with all those “nots.” I think you’re just floundering for excuses to stay in the Northeast. Which is fine. Just admit it, name it, and own it.</p>

<p>think regionalism is worse here in the south. Because it’s poorer and less metropolitan than the coasts, a lot of smart kids have a dumb tendency to stay in state. Not even just for publics. It drives me up the wall. Get out of your comfort zone dammit</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>duke? UNC? </p>

<p>anyway i feel like this applies anywhere. i am from CA, and no one ever wants to leave the bay area. to a bay area kid, everywhere outside of it is backwards thinking. “a stuck up, white, conservative christian” is the general stereotype of a non-californian. UCs are haven’s for a lot of students.</p>

<p>i agree with the above poster - i wish students would leave their comfort zones sometimes.</p>

<p>Many people mistakenly think Northwestern is too “pre-professional” when the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences is the largest undergraduate school. NU provides a social and academic niche for EVERYONE and doesn’t have stringent requirements. If you want to study something, I guarantee you that NU offers the subject.</p>

<p>We live in the mid-Atlantic area; I asked S (who is applying to mostly top-tier colleges) about the possibility of looking at schools outside of the New England (and mid-Atlantic) area, like Stanford, Wash U, etc. His response was “Why should I when there are so many great schools on the East Coast?” He doesn’t have a problem being away from home - he just doesn’t see the logic in it.</p>

<p>

That’s kind of a crazy response to applicannot applying to Wustl and Rice. And your “odd list” is reasonably accurate:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/724115-so-when-does-get-old.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/724115-so-when-does-get-old.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

</p>

<p>I say the same thing about Penn (and it’s also true)…they never listen…stupid CC masses</p>

<p>bclintok,</p>

<p>Yes, the qualities that make a school ideal for me are very stringent. You actually did a good job of listing the schools I’m applying to. I’m definitely applying to BU, GWU (my top choice, actually, and certainly a match), and Yale, which you listed. I agree that Tufts is too suburban; however, given its financial aid and its fit for other qualities, I may also apply. You left out WUSTL and Rice, probably because they are not in the Northeast, so you may not have thought I’d apply there. You’ve also missed Pitt. I’d possibly be applying to JHU if I didn’t live so close and if I didn’t know so much about Annapolis (although JHU is a bit like Tufts). American was on my list until I decided it felt like a glorified high school and until I had found a better low match. I’d also like to apply to NYU but the point i smoot because their FA sucks. I also like Stanford, but it’s too far away (I’m on a tight budget) and regrettably a bit more suburban than my tastes as well.</p>

<p>So other than Tufts, I’m not actually remotely interested in any of the schools on your list. You know me better than I thought! I actually don’t live in the Northeast, and considering how freakin’ cold it is up there, I’m hoping one of my non-Northeastern schools will kick in. I’m hoping for GW’s FA to come through, and if not, WUSTL is my top choice. Considering I’m going to spend four years at the school I go to, ought I have requirements as to what I’d like it to be like? I certainly wouldn’t buy a car just because someone else liked it or thought it was “the best”. Although I agree that some of the schools on my list are unattainable (almost certainly Yale, possibly WUSTL), I don’t find any of them to be “profoundly pedestrian”. They all interest me greatly; that’s why I’ve gone to great lengths to discover them.</p>

<p>As for Duke, the sports team is too good. I don’t really like sports. As for UNC, Chapel Hill is difficult to get into out of state anyways, and it doesn’t have the right atmosphere.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>wow, i’ve neverr heard that as a negative LOL (i’m not trying to be condescending or whatever… i hope i am not coming off that way). if that is the only thing that pulls you away from duke, i hope you know that you don’t need to get involved with bball… it’s just one facet of duke life. if it’s a culmination of others things, then i understand :)</p>

<p>Yeah, but sports culture has a tendency to bleed into everything. I really, really despise sports culture. To be completely honest with you, I’ve never particularly liked school spirit… you can ignore it to a point, but it gets annoying, especially at places with such brutal rivalries as Duke. That, combined with sub par financial aid (comparatively speaking) and match or reach status, meant I barely looked at it. I considered not going to Pitt because of its teams and its location near another team (and football is really the worst offender…) but it’s too good of a safety for me to pass up.</p>

<p>George Washington University is one of the most expensive schools in the nation and generally does not give out generous financial aid. Many well-off Northeast students attend there.</p>

<p>modestmelody’s explanation about distance certainly applies to my son. I don’t know that he has any particular anti-Southern bias, and I’m almost certain he has no anti-Midwest or -West bias. We have friends in Chicago and family in Oregon, and he likes both those places. But they are far from home, and the idea of going far from home has no particular appeal for him. If the best place or the only place that suited him was a thousand miles away or more, he wouldn’t have a problem about going that far, I don’t think; but his feeling is that there are so many great schools within less than a day’s drive of Boston, what’s the point of going further?</p>

<p>Speaking as a person from Texas I think people in general have stereotypes that they form. I mean I didn’t want to any school not on the East Coast, and definitely not in the deep south (I’m black) or west coast. And if I wasn’t from Texas I wouldn’t have even applied to UT. People from the Northeast stay in the northeast because the northeast is pretty much the one of if not the best region of the country.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Huh? George Washington has fantastic financial aid. It’s aid is almost entirely need-based or need-aware (I’m not sure there are actually ANY need-blind, merit-only grants or scholarships available). Then again, I’m talking about students with EFCs between 0 (mine) and 5000; I have never paid attention to the other groups. However, I have heard most people on the GW board here (and I’d say most of them are not 0-5000) say they were satisfied with their FA. I have nothing but anecdotes, though. There’s definitely no one saying it’s not the most expensive school or that it doesn’t attract a lot of students from the northeast, for sure.</p>