Strawman arguments are unhelpful. No one says anyone has to pick U Chicago or Penn over Harvard. No one is going to shame a person in MA for going to Harvard (16% of the last incoming class was from New England) but most people who live and attend school in the area probably venture beyond the state borders at some point in their lives, to experience other cultures, go on business trips, you name it. If your relatives are myopic and don’t ever see another state except to visit Mickey Mouse, that is sad.
This is something to think about if you’re considering applying as an out-of-stater to somebody else’s flagship. You may find that the college is full of already-established cliques of people who have not left and never will leave their comfort zone.
To those who have never moved from their birthplace, I guess choosing a college in an unfamiliar state could be traumatizing. I encouraged my kids to move outside their comfort zone. College is the perfect time to move away–. you are surrounded by thousands of same age students who are all in the same situation. I think it is much harder on a high school student whose family has transferred into the district (peer groups have already been established etc).
I grew up in Boston and know dozens- maybe a hundred if I try- of relatives, HS friends, etc. who have never lived anywhere else. Their loss.
They don’t understand the national political scene very well because they’ve never listened to talk radio in Tulsa or Fort Worth. They don’t understand the national economy very well because they’ve never lived in a city where the GM plant closed and overnight, the value of their house dropped by 30%. They can’t fathom why someone in Duluth doesn’t just “take the subway to work” and save on owning a second car. They don’t believe stories in the newspapers about people who die waiting for a referral to an oncological gynecologist or a pulmonary specialist because they all live within a subway ride of about 5 world class medical centers which treat royalty and the indigent. And when a cousin needed a second opinion, they didn’t didn’t have to get on a plane to go to Mayo or the Cleveland Clinic… they just grabbed their medical records and the CD with the MRI and hustled across the street. And they don’t understand why “everyone” doesn’t do that.
I love my family and love their provincialism- even the ones who went to Harvard, btw… but there is no substitute for developing an alternative point of view by living somewhere else for a bit.
I mostly lurk, but blossom’s reasons for living elsewhere make wonderful points and I agree wholeheartedly that without living in other places (geographically and culturally), one won’t actually understand other viewpoints well (be they about the weather or politics or whatever).
That said, I don’t necessarily know if kids need to do that right after high school.
I have one an hour away at the very good state flagship. Has new friends, keeps up with HS friends - great supportive community at home if they chooses to move here after graduation but they may choose not to. Have second child who will be moving far far for college, and all child’s friends who are staying local, for very good education at a very good price, are sad. But that kid wants to see other places now.
Maybe we should encourage our kids to be who they are? Encourage them to grow and see other places / experience the world, but when they’re actually ready to? Don’t judge those who stay close, and don’t judge those who leave. Just love them.
I have lived in a few different places, but of course not in most state and never in an isolated midwestern or southern rural area. I think a person that stays well informed can certainly understand how life in such an area is different than life in a big city or its suburbs. I have a feeling that those who are that close-minded and uninformed may not gain all that much from living somewhere different. You have to be open to new ideas and people to learn from them.
I don’t think anyone would fault any student for picking his flagship if it is Wisconsin or Michigan or Virginia. So if 200 kids from the same high school all want to go to Michigan, should they not go because they should branch out, go see the world? Should they try for a random roommate like my nephew did and be unhapy, or do like my niece did and room with someone she knew as she was going 1000 miles away? Another nephew went to UF with more than a few kids from his high school and roomed with one.
I graduated from a high school in Wisconsin. About half didn’t go to college, a handful went to college OOS, a few went to the smaller state colleges in WI or Minnesota (reciprocity), some for sports. The vast majority stayed at home and attended the local UW. The rest, maybe 50, went to Madison. This year the boys basketball team was ranked 5th in the nation. Four are going to D1 schools to play- one to Madison, one to Marquette, two to UW-Green Bay. Why should they feel the need to go OOS? They’ll see other places when they travel, but their parents and friends can see them play the majority of their games. They grew up cheering for these teams.
One thing I’ve learned from living all around the country is that some people like where they live and never want to move… Boston, Baltimore? Non movers. Colorado? They move in but then won’t leave. I’ve also learned that many people think they are very open to other cultures but really aren’t. My cousin attend Williams. There were 6 girls in her suite, 3 from Mass, 1 Conn, and 2 NY. All white, all 18, all majoring in English or hIstory or some thing lIke that. Three of them named Katie. Yep, practically a UN convention going on there.
Whats with the snarky sarcasm @twoinanddone ? So your nephew had a bad roommate. Anecdotal stories are not data. Maybe it wasn’t the roommate who was the problem. Just a thought.
My s’s both went away to college and had roommates they never met before. Younger s purposely picked someone from a very different background. They roomed together all 4 years and are still friends. Yes, just anecdotal evidence…
There are those who are inquisitive and like to see the world. There are those who don’t want to venture far from the nest. These are choices, which will lead to very different life experiences. No one is saying one is right and the other is wrong. They are choices.
I am sorry Chronicles never updated this interactive map after 2011. Its fun to play with to see where freshmen at different colleges matriculate from. Look at how NE centric Harvard was.
http://chronicle.com/interactives/freshmen_insts/#id=166027
@jym626 ^great site!
Thanks @STEM2017 ! Many are very disappointed that they have never updated it. It is fun to play with.
Interestingly, more freshmen came from California in 2010 than from MA. Guess they didn’t mind crossing the great divide. Others must have shorter umbilical cords.
I went to an elite college OOS, and lived next door to my best friend from high school freshman and senior year. And, except for the term he was working in Alaska and the term I was working in New York, we hung out together a lot. We remained best friends, and we are still close today (although we haven’t spent more than a few hours together at a time in over 30 years). Having a high school friend in college didn’t stop us from making other friends – in fact, it helped some. We were both social, and the fact that we knew each other really well and were comfortable with one another made us very attractive to be around in a situation where those two qualities were almost completely absent, at least at first. We were guaranteed not to be trying to be someone we weren’t, unlike about 50% of our classmates, because neither of us could possibly get away with it with the other present. Anyway, we each had a broad circle of friends, with considerable but far from total overlap.
Of course, that was the exception, not the rule. Back then, there were lots of people from some of the top prep schools, but that hardly meant that they liked each other and wanted to hang out together. Most people didn’t have friends there, but as others have described it was incredibly easy to meet people.
And an important thing about elite colleges: What makes them elite, to a great extent, is that despite whatever demographic diversity they have, their student bodies are remarkably homogeneous in their attitudes and interests (unlike large public flagships that educate a wide range of students). I had been used to being one of a kind in high school, and all of a sudden there were lots of my kind around. It was a completely exhilarating experience. In high school, I had been the only person I knew who cared about French Renaissance poetry. And there I was standing in line to see the French Department’s DUS for permission to take a literature course, and every single person in that line had a favorite poem from the French Renaissance! Some of them were girls, beautiful girls! Beautiful girls who cared about French poetry – who’d have thunk it? As far as I was concerned, it might just as well have been heaven. (And you could have had the same experience with protein structures or Riemann surfaces.)
My kids had high school friends who roomed with other high school friends for all four years of college, and they had high school friends who went far away, alone, and never looked back. People who were awkward and insecure, or insular, in high school, remained awkward, insecure, or insular when they got to college, although generally time cured or at least softened those qualities, wherever they were, whomever they were with. And the opposite: people who were social and outgoing made friends easily, whether they started out with five other friends or none.
jym626, You were the one who said students should see the world and implied there was something wrong with those who never left their neighborhoods - and that my cousins only went to Florida to see Mickey Mouse when it was their grandmother they went to see. Yes, I took that as a dig that they are unsophisticated and only wanted to go to WDW. Others said ‘Why would anyone want to be roommates with a high school friend?’ (like my niece did). Nothing wrong with nephew, nothing wrong with his assigned roommate (except a girlfriend who was in the room too much) but they just didn’t match. I think nephew regrets not picking someone he knew as a roommate as it just would have made the living situation more pleasant.
I’m saying all things work, just different things work for different people. For my own kids, one stayed close, one went far, both knew a handful of kids from different parts of their past and were happy to see a friendly face at school when they arrived.
Sure, twoinanddone. If you say so b-( No where did I say there was anything wrong with insular folks who don’t leave their community. I said it was sad, and that they should spread their wings. There is a lot to learn outside of book knowledge. That is my opinion, and I stand by it.
I agree with Blossom. People, especially bright, inquisitive or intellectual ones could learn a lot from seeing the world through the eyes of others.
And for what it’s worth, when many say they vacationed in Fl, it’s frequently to see the mouse. Commonly grandma and grandpa take the grandkids because they can get Fl state resident passes-- much cheaper! These days most of those loopholes have been closed, unfortunately. But even at Epcot you can get a flavor of other cultures. Worth a trip. Nice fireworks too.