Are kids moving south?

Applying to College
41

No matter the study - whether or not you believe the methodology, they all pretty much show the same.

Are they kids or retirees or families, etc. - I don’t know. But all studies show similar - the Carolinas clean up, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Atlanta (GA if you will).

I’m just one industry but Toyota left Los Angeles for Dallas, Nissan Los Angeles for TN, Mitsubishi Los Angeles to Tennessee, VW Michigan for VA (DC area), Mercedes NJ to Atlanta and is in the process of leaving its Detroit offices for Atlanta (per auto news). Porsche is in Atlanta. New Ford plants in KY and TN. Hyundai is already in Alabama and is opening a big plant near Savannah.

Alliance Bernstein moved NYC to Nashville. Goldman moved a lot to Texas.

In the end, where jobs go, ultimately people will move - so today’s kids won’t have a choice.

I didn’t have a choice - I’m in TN because my job moved here. Well I had a choice but I wanted to work.

Top 10 cities with the highest number of move-ins includes:

  1. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina - Wilmington, North Carolina (1st in 2024)
  2. Ocala, Florida (2nd in 2024)
  3. Raleigh, North Carolina (6th in 2024)
  4. Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina (4th in 2024)
  5. Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas (unranked in 2024)
  6. Charlotte, North Carolina (5th in 2024)
  7. Boise, Idaho (11th in 2024)
  8. Knoxville, Tennessee (8th in 2024)
  9. Nashville, Tennessee (13th in 2024)
  10. Jacksonville, Florida (9th in 2024)

In contrast, California took three of the top 10 most moved from cities. “The Northeast and West Coast continue to see a steady increase in people moving out likely due to high costs of living, overcrowding, and spiking insurance premiums, among other factors,” says Schwartz. “As economic uncertainty persists and the housing market remains tight, we anticipate a continued migration toward more affordable and emerging markets throughout the country.”

The top four areas with the most move-outs, along with those at numbers six and seven, remain unchanged from 2024, PODS found.

Personal anecdotes are nice and yes, the headline says kids and I presume it’s meant to be college students as a kid might be perceived as a 25 year old but one only needs to look at census data to know the country has shifted Southward. Will it continue with the political situation - don’t know - but the data is far beyond anecdotal.

by the way - In N Out Burger from all the West Coast lovers - first outside of CA HQ is about 10 minutes from me in Franklin TN. For now, it’s regional. But the owner is moving here. I’m sure the HQ will eventually too.

Top 10 cities with the highest number of move-outs includes:

  1. Los Angeles, California (1st in 2024)
  2. Northern California (San Francisco area) (2nd in 2024)
  3. South Florida (Miami area) (3rd in 2024)
  4. Long Island, New York (Serving parts of NYC) (4th in 2024)
  5. San Diego, California (8th in 2024)
  6. Central Jersey, New Jersey (6th in 2024)
  7. Chicago, Illinois (7th in 2024)
  8. Boston, Massachusetts (13th in 2024)
  9. Hudson Valley, New York (10th in 2024)
  10. Denver, Colorado (12th in 2024)

Top 10 Cities People are Moving To (and Move Away From) - Structural Building Components Association

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42

I don’t have either anecdotes or data about whether high school kids are aiming for college in the South, but I do live in a southern state where the legislature is asserting ever more control over hiring and curriculum at our public universities. I’ve often wondered if there’ll be a tipping point at which those changes overcome the (sterling) reputation our public Us have enjoyed.

Anecdotally, kids who I’ve known who’ve gone to some of our best public schools have been dismayed at some of the changes they hadn’t realized were happening, but for upcoming students I hear very little about it.

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43

And, I wouldn’t be surprised if similar numbers start to come out about Canadian universities. However, their application deadlines are much later, so we won’t start to have numbers for this application season until early to mid 2026.

Here’s an article from back in April about some trends that Canadian universities were starting to see at that time: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-universities-report-jump-us-applicants-trump-cuts-funding-2025-04-15/

Anecdotally, a ton of kids at our HS and in our area seem to be considering UBC. I was chatting with my chemo nurse yesterday who has a HS senior at a different Bay Area HS, she told me about how the only tours her family has done outside our area are UW Seattle and UBC, and said UBC seemed to be popular at her HS as well.

Back when my S23 was applying, most people in his social circle had not even heard of UBC and he was the only one who toured it. It feels like a big change.

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44

But those have always been selective and seen in a similar vein. (And I know people who’ve been to both Vandy and Duke who describe them as southern-lite). The question is more about larger numbers of students moving which would be I guess Auburn, Clemson, Alabama etc. Cost one factor maybe. Possibly wider protests, but those are largely shut down now so interested to see if there is a change.
I checked our Maia and these kind of southern schools.. increase yes but you’re talking from 0-1 to 4-5. Well, you can swing those stats anyway you want (400% increase!) but at least for us it’s not moving the needle, especially as last years data shows very few actual enrollments at these schools. Guess the increase in students is coming from elsewhere.

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45

50 colleges where applications rose the most since pre-COVID – 3 are in Wisconsin

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46

makes lots of sense! I do think people go where they feel most comfortable, by and large. (I do know of some kids who are feisty exceptions who want to upset “status quo” so to speak!).

47

As I recall, Common App usually does a late-November report about application trends as of the November 1 deadlines. So we should get a broader look at what has happened so far this cycle from that report.

In general, though, domestic college enrollment actually peaked back in 2010:

college-enrollment-student-demographic-statistics
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But since then, the total number of college applications has continued to grow. This is for a variety of reasons, including more applications per applicant and increased international applicants (at least until this last cycle).

This is not an even effect, however. More “national” colleges including flagships have tended to see increasing or at least level applications, but lots of more regional/local colleges have seen declining applications (not all, though, just a lot).

I think there is good reason to believe the “demographic cliff” (which is more of a gentle slope) will mostly just enhance this split effect.

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48

The trend seems obvious and the topic comes up every year?

More kids are going to large southern schools followed by countless posts about how “their kids would never go to a southern school because of blah bah blah”….

and yet the facts remain the same.

I also think it’s interesting that people dont think of Indiana as a “southern state” and yet we all know the history of Indiana.

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49

Yep, southern in geography or mindset? Of some of the “southern” states mentioned above, a few are more purple than red. Broad brushes don’t always paint the right picture. I can think of a number of kids who would consider, for example, Georgia or North Carolina but not Alabama. Indiana - IU (but almost always for Kelley) and Purdue - is popular at our school though.

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50

Georgraphically it’s not (nor is Kentucky) but obviously, it shares a lot more with the south than not.

But Bloomington is blue and let’s be honest. people are going there for rank - whether IU Kelley or Purdue Engineering.

But if Alabama or Ole Miss or UTK were top ranked, you’d likely have people dying to go there - just like people do Ga Tech or Emory and now even you see a lot of UF popping up, given they are a consistent high flyer in the ranks.

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51

Interestingly when people want to talk about population growth, they ignore the biggest driver - immigration. Which is still the biggest factor in Texas and Florida’s growth. The only state that lost population between 2023 and 2024 was incidentally also in the south - West Virgina.

I think college trend data is bit tougher as application trends are very skewed by things such as inclusion in common app and state flagship cost and/or admission rates.

Despite the emphasis here, I see pretty much zero hunt for merit in southern schools in my area. The value hunters here go to the state flagship. The combination of expensive state schools, extremely competitive flagships or low ranked/quality flagships drives a whole different demographic of hunting for merit at southern schools that we just don’t see. Our flagship sees a ton of kids who can’t get into the UC they want or don’t want to pay for the northeast tuition even without big merit the southern schools are offering. I think those trends are just different.

My anecdotal data is too skewed to stem nerds to be useful. The only southern school where I know kids applying in any volume is Georgia Tech.

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52

I am very curious to see the numbers.
We took D26 to tour a potential school in Ireland last month and the Admissions Officer we talked with mention that the influx of US applications was the ‘talk of the town’ for many universities in that region. Their initial assessments was an increase of about 30% of application from US students (not yet known what that would actually yield? - are they curious just to see what would happen applicants? - or are they serious applicants?)

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53

That’s a good question to keep in mind for all of the applicant number reports, whether we are talking about applicants to southern, northern, Canadian, or other international schools.

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54

By the way, there have been various forms of “Sun Belt” migration going on for decades. Like Georgia got down to the #16th state in the 1960 Census, but then it started climbing–1970 #15, 1980 #13, by 1990 it was up to #11, then #10 in 2000, #9 2010, #8 2020.

Arizona was #35 in 1960, #29 by 1980, #20 by 2000, #14 in 2020. And so on.

Some people credit widespread home air conditioning, some the civil rights movement, some various “modernizing” and/or “urbanizing” economic developments, and so on.

International migration has also played a major role, with the South followed by the West experiencing the largest increases in foreign-born populations since 1980.

Just some background to keep in mind.

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55

What’s not to like about southern schools. Many appear less polarized, people in the south are friendlier, spring comes earlier, fall comes later and the Sun sets later than in the northeast.

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56

For those who like data trends - shows domestic vs internation immigration impact and particularly looks at what’s been happening post covid. The south’s domestic migration trends have changed significantly in last few years and some of the big pandemic “losers” have seen some of the most significant growth.

Immigration drives the nation’s healthy post-pandemic population growth, new census data show | Brookings

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57

What are the obvious reasons?

58

It’s so easy to pluck the data that supports your POV.

Here’s my attempt- based on the FASCINATING Brookings study posted above.

“In the past year, the top two population-gaining states were Florida and Texas. Yet as Figure 4 shows, both gained fewer people in 2023-24 than in 2022-23 (with Florida showing smaller gains for two straight years). At the same time, California and New York—two states that registered population declines during the peak pandemic years— not only gained population in 2023-24, but ranked third and fifth, respectively, among all states in numerical population gains (see downloadable Table B). “

This hardly suggests that the nation is migrating in great numbers to the South, and abandoning the West and East Coast. Where the long term trends will shake out- who knows. But I would be leery of assuming that just because UT and Georgia Tech are the new “it” schools for kids in NY, that this represents a long term and sustainable trend. Maybe it is- and eventually there will be data to show that.

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59

Darcy, I don’t have time to read the whole study but thanks for posting- a fascinating read. Do you know if the authors break out refugees from other types of immigrants? Having grown up among refugee families (including my own) their migration patterns are really different from other types of “not born here’s”. Especially since- depending on the when and the why- there is often little choice as to where to go. So framing it as voluntary in some way misses the point.

I think sociologists have studied the Somali refugee communities in Maine, for example. The question “Why here” is typically “a church in Portland was willing to sponsor us”, not “We were really jazzed at the thought of snow in a state which is majority white”.

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60

If AI isn’t lying…..

The latest sunset in the contiguous U.S. occurs in Ontonagon, Michigan around mid-June, with the sun setting at approximately 9:55 p.m. The latest sunset in the entire U.S. is in Utqiagvik, Alaska, which experiences 24-hour daylight for a portion of the year, so sunset occurs continuously for 84 days from mid-May to late July.

  • Ontonagon, Michigan:

    Experiences one of the latest sunsets in the contiguous U.S. around mid-June, at about 9:55 p.m.

  • Utqiagvik, Alaska:

    As the northernmost settlement, it experiences a period of 24-hour daylight, with the last sunset in May followed by 84 days of continuous daylight.

  • Other locations:

    The specific timing of the latest sunset varies by latitude and time zone, with other western-edge towns like Cape Flattery, Washington and Fortuna, North Dakota also having very late sunsets.

image
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