<p>Are they more competitive and rigorous than the south?
More comments will be appreciated!</p>
<p>No. Why would you think that? It all depends on the individual school and not whether it is in the north or south.</p>
<p>Are you trying to point to the fact most of the nation’s highest ranked schools are in the North?</p>
<p>Not true at all. </p>
<p>I got into Harvard and Duke, visited my best friends at both (I go to a prep school that sends loads of kids to both) and Duke seemed much more difficult. Granted I was only comparing intro econ and intro engineering classes, but Duke is tougher than Harvard. Granted Harvard is much harder to get into, but the grade inflation is terrific! </p>
<p>On the other hand, the toughest schools in the country (in my opinion/the general reputation around my prep school) are MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Caltech, and Columbia. Most of them, other than CalTech (which is the absolute hardest), are in the Northeast.</p>
<p>You hear of more big name schools in the northeast because there are more schools in the northeast period. There are more schools in the northeast because there are more people in the northeast.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies.
I am an Asian and I am from some big city (not in the US) and it is extremely competitive. In that place they have either s**tty universities or the top of the world.</p>
<p>So can this “theory” apply to universities?
Since a place (especially northeast) is competitive, many things in there would be competitive, such as food, companies, businesses, restaurants, k-12 schools…</p>
<p>You would do well not to assume the US is like your home country.</p>
<p>No, there are more good schools in the NE but the best of the South are as good as any school around. Duke, Davidson, William & Mary, Vanderbilt, Rice … can compete with any school in America.</p>
<p>Duke and Tulane are both made out to be very rigorous. Southern schools with rankings comparable to northern schools will have comparable rigor. However, in these days there are simply more highly-ranked schools in the northeast; this is because in the early days of the United States (and the colonial period) more institutes of higher learning were founded in the northeast than in the south. Schools that have been around longer have more prestige and higher-rankings, as a rule of thumb.</p>
<p>The reason there are more good schools in the NE is because the expansion within the US was from east to west. The universities there were established earlier, and hence have older histories, including more famous alumni, which have contributed to their being higher in quality (generally speaking). </p>
<p>The only exception i can think to the rule is William and Mary which i believe is the second oldest behind Harvard. Not trying to say that W&M is unprestigious ( i don’t think it is) just saying given it’s age, it’s surprising that it isn’t at least as prestigious as Harvard or Yale (probably has to do with it being a public university.)</p>
<p>But yeah, the way the U.S. expanded is basically the reason why there are better schools in the east. Although there are exceptions. Caltech and Stanford can probably match the most prestigious ivies, at least in quality. The same would hold for Duke, and probably other prestigious universities in the south (Vanderbilt, Rice, UVa etc.)</p>
<p>This gif shows the development pretty accurately:</p>
<p>[File:US</a> states by date of statehood3.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_states_by_date_of_statehood3.gif]File:US”>File:US states by date of statehood3.gif - Wikipedia)</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_states_by_date_of_statehood3.gif]File:US](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_states_by_date_of_statehood3.gif%5DFile:US){kind=link}
<p>full article:</p>
<p>[List</a> of U.S. states by date of statehood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_date_of_statehood]List”>List of U.S. states by date of admission to the Union - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Although there are older private universities in the North, the South led the way in public higher education and continues to have some of the country’s top state universities. UNC was the first public university to open (1795) and award degrees (1798). The University of Georgia, the first state-chartered university (1785), opened in 1801. UVA was established in 1819. The College of William and Mary is almost 100 years older than UNC but did not become public until 1906.</p>
<p>North Carolina and Virginia have two of the best state university systems in the country, with strong flagship (UNC, UVA) and land grant (NCSU, VT) universities, as well a number of other well-regarded four-year institutions (W&M being a great example).</p>
<p>In North Carolina (and perhaps in other parts of the South), most of our top high school students go to state universities. Because of our strong public universities, many of those top students never even consider private education. I’m certain that statistics would show that most of our doctors, lawyers, engineers, writers, and teachers graduated from state universities.</p>
<p>Thanks for the comments!</p>
<p>I am thinking of those schools, (I changed my decision from earlier)
Stevens Institute of Technology
Fordham University</p>
<p>They are from the northeast…so what do you think about them?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is a popular misconception, especially among Northeasterners. In fact, with 55.3 million people (2010 census), the Northeast is the least populous of the 4 regions recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau. Next smallest is the Midwest with 66.9 million, then the West with 71.9 million. The most populous region is the South with 114.6 million—more than twice as many people as in the Northeast.</p>
<p>Of course, each of the other regions comprises many more states than the Northeast, and population density is highest in the Northeast. Also, the Census Bureau definition of the Northeast excludes Maryland, Delaware, and the DC metropolitan area (including Northern Virginia), which many people would consider the Northeast. The Census Bureau places them in the South. But even if you reallocate MD (5.7 million), DE (0.9 million), DC (0.6 million), and DC’s northern Virginia suburbs (2.6 million) to the Northeast, it’s still the least populous region. High population density in a small region does not add up to more people; roughly only 20% of Americans live in the Northeast.</p>
<p>There are more private colleges and universities in the Northeast because they got a head start; because this was long the wealthiest region of the country, and many of those schools were well supported by private philanthropy; and because, once these private schools got started, people in the Northeast tended to favor them over public higher education, while states in the South, Midwest, and West generally invested more in building up their public higher education systems, with fewer private schools in those regions.</p>
<p>It’s no surprise, then, that many of the best public universities are in the South (UVA, William & Mary, UNC Chapel Hill, Georgia Tech, Texas), Midwest (Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois), and West (UC Berkeley, UCLA, U Washington). The only Northeastern public to crack the US News top 50 is Penn State, at #45.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are 20 Northeastern (including MD & DC) private universities in the US News top 50, as opposed to 6 from the South, 5 from the Midwest, and 3 from the West. Among top 50 LAC,s, 29 are in the Northeast, 9 in the West, 6 in the Midwest, and 6 in the South. So clearly, the top private colleges and universities are heavily clustered in the Northeast, while the top public universities are generally to be found in the three other regions.</p>
<p>Thanks for the comments!
Also bump up the post for more comments(if possible)!</p>