Where doctors' kids go to college ....

<p>Ah, yes. Eastern, Western, Northern, and Central Michigan. The quintessential “directional” schools. Interestingly, though, no “Southern Michigan,” perhaps because most of the public universities in the state–Eastern, Western, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Michigan-Dearborn, University of Michigan-Flint, Michigan State, Oakland U, Wayne State, Grand Valley State, Saginaw Valley State–are in fact located in the southern part of the state, where most of the people live. </p>

<p>Rivaled in directionality by Illinois which has Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western, and Northeastern Illinois Universities.</p>

<p>But there are many directionals defined by true compass points elsewhere. Like Southern Maine, Southern New Hampshire, Eastern Connecticut State, Western Connecticut State, Southern Connecticut State, East Carolina, West Carolina, Carolina Central, Georgia Southern, West Georgia, Northwestern Georgia, East Georgia, Georgia Southwestern, Middle Georgia, Central Florida, South Florida, North Florida, West Florida, East Florida, North Alabama, South Alabama, West Alabama, Southern Mississippi, Northwestern State (LA), Southeastern Louisiana, East Tennessee State, Middle Tennessee State, Eastern Kentucky, Northern Kentucky, Western Kentucky . . . well, you get the drift.</p>

<p>Math mom, the SUNY system has four university centers: Binghamton, Albany, Buffalo, and StonyBrook. They are large universities offering higher degrees. Then there are ( or used to be when I worked there) 13 state university colleges. I won’t/ can’t name them all, but they include Geneseo, Brockport, Oswego, Buffalo, New Paltz, etc. The colleges all offer different majors, with usually two or three offering more popular ones like business or nursing. They started as teacher colleges. Then there are quite a few specialty colleges, like environmental science, and many two-year community and technical colleges.</p>

<p>And on another note, Maryland has a nice little directional named University of Maryland Baltimore County ( UMBC). It has a great president who has made national news for improving science education. It also has a high rate of kids getting into grad and other professional schools. It has a specific scholarship program aimed at getting more minority students into STEM and provides mentoring and internships for those students. The program is called the Meyerhof, and it is available to all, but its initial focus was on minority students. It has other money too for top students. A friend’s son is there now as a freshman and they are paying less than $5k for the year.</p>

<p>FIU (Florida International University) went in all directions. With about 50k students it serves a metropolitan area of over 2 million people. It opened to students in 1972 and has recently added a Law School and a Medical School. It could have been called Southernmost Mainland University but I can see why they didn’t: SMU was taken already.</p>

<p>I believe that regional differences and parental educational history tend to influence College choices. Medical schools tend to be populated mostly from students who have attended the best Colleges in their local region. State flagship or above quality for college would therefore be the most common route to medical school. I also suspect that when it comes to physicians that specialty also tends to be an influence. Most of my physician friends are specialists or sub specialists. Just looking at my group and a friend of mine’s group reveals undergraduate Colleges of: U of Washington, U of Georgia, Harvard (2), Minnesota (2) Occidental, Stanford (5), Williams, Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley (2). Medical Schools include UCLA, UCSD, UCSF, Stanford (2), Minnesota (2), Harvard (2) Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Pennsylvania, Washington U, Wisconsin, Columbia and Baylor. I am in California. When I think of where all of my physician friend’s children went to College I come up with a list of:
Whitman
UC Berkeley (multiple)
UC Davis
Stanford (multiple)
Santa Clara (multiple)
UC Santa Barbara (multiple)
UCLA (multiple)
UCSD
Scripps
USC (multiple)
Claremont
Loyola Marymount
Bates
Dartmouth
Cornell
NYU
Yale
Brown
Pennsylvania
Bryn Mawr
Haverford
Duke (multiple)
Northeastern
Emory
Rice</p>

<p>Can you please rewrite the above sentence so we can understand what you are trying to say?</p>

<p>Medical school is very competitive and there are few spots available for thousands of applicants. Most people are happy to get a position at a respectable school but unlike undergrad the competition is a lot more fierce and many times candidates have limited choices.</p>

<p>And sometimes a directional has no direction. S1 is a senior at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, which in another universe might be called Southern West Virginia Univesity or University of Southern West Virginia (Or the University of West Virginians, since so many at our so-called flagship (WVU) are from OOS.) We also have many four-year former teachers colleges with university status, but none of them have any direction either. ;-)</p>

<p>Doctors do not prefer to enroll their children to medical schools like Harvard. I can’t find a single one of my colleagues who would do that.</p>