I’m not buying this - no way does any state pick pistachio as #1.
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Recently, The Wall Street Journal tried its hand at ranking colleges by “their impact on graduates’ salaries and how this relates to the cost of attending the college”:
Filtering for public institutions, the best “value”:
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No surprise that the first four on the list have high percentages of engineering majors.
In most cases, pay level at graduation has more to do with the major than the college.
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The caption says it is the highest share relative to the national average sales for that flavor. So if 1% of national sales are pistachio but 3% of NY sales are pistachio, that is counted as 3x the national average and deemed the most popular, even if 20% of sales are vanilla. Because vanilla, chocolate and (I assume) strawberry are double digit percentages of overall national sales, there’s no way any of these will sell three times that amount in a single state and be deemed “most popular”. I’m guessing green tea and several others are a fraction of 1% of national sales. As they say, lies, damn lies and statistics…
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You are correct! I was thinking in terms of Census definitions, and definitely was not intending to include Maryland or Virginia (although I would include the University of Delaware, despite the lack of definitional consistency).
A digression from the thread as a whole: Just for any future readers out there that are curious about Iowa … Iowa City is hands down one of the great college towns in the US. For those who have not experienced it, make no assumptions based on what you know about Iowa in general … school spirit is phenomenal, athletic support is strong, the university campus merges and spills into a human-scaled downtown with lots of interesting restaurants, night life is vibrant … There are a few of these gems hidden out there. (Lawrence, Kansas is another)
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Another general thought for this thread: the “unheralded” flagships are often the first choice school for a lot of in-state students who are drawn by its regional status, its sports teams, and an unquestioning sense for much of their life that of course they’ll go to “XYZ.” In my rural school in Florida, that was absolutely the case with lots of students for whom UF or FSU was the highest goal they could imagine (back in the days when bother were easy admits).
This means that school spirit is often much higher than you would expect for a school ranked in the unglamourous middle of USNWR. Sure, their yield is not all that, because they are often the safety of a lot of kids who end up going out-of-state, but again, for those who end up attending, I bet for a lot of them it was their first choice. Less chance of ending up with a room-mate who is constantly moaning about not being at Northwestern or Duke.
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Did you watch Ozark? The aspirational school was my alma mater…MIZZOU. 
It was one of the schools, along with Iowa and Kansas that accept more than 70% of their applicants and graduate more than 70% of them.
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The valedictorians from my high school went to Harvard and UNC. “why drive a brand-new Cadillac off a cliff?” mused the UNC woman’s stepfather to our friend who went to Amherst. And then he went and bought a new boat.
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My sister was valedictorian, and turned down MIT for a full ride at Missouri S&T.
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Coming from California - I think Oregon and Colorado get lots of applications due to familiarity, relative proximity and for the experience of a traditional (ie football) big school experience. (And until now they were all in the same sports conference as the big name instate schools.)
My kid looked at several midwest schools bc that’s where I grew up but very few of his classmates were applying to those (except the Wisconsin and Michigan) and let’s be honest - most kids he knows can’t imagine surviving long cold, grey winters.
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Lafayette frat scene is not as all pervasive as it used to be. When I started way back in 1977 there were 1500 men and 500 women. It had 17 fraternities with 90% of the men joining fraternities. The school’s infrastructure at the time was such that it needed the fraternity houses to house the students and the fraternity dining plans to feed the students. Sororities started in about 1980 and there 3 when I left.
Over the years, the school spent money on dorms, dining hall etc and wanted to change its reputation of a party frat school and began to kick fraternities off campus. Many of big red brick fraternity houses on campus are now either living learning places or specialty class buildings.
I think currently Lafayette has 6 fraternities and an equal number of sororities. 37% of student body belongs to a greek organization. Also I believe no greek organization can rush during freshman year.
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Just catching up on this thread, adding entry level College admissions officers to this list which is apropos for CC. Many starting AO salaries are even in the $30Ks, including at some private colleges.
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As Illinois residents, UIUC has become ultra competitive and very difficult to get into even outside of Engineering and Business and there are much better OOS schools to consider over the next tier of in-state schools.
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My son’s dorm was once a fraternity house!
Lafayette is a great school, and I love its hilltop location!
But note: 37% of student body, if 25% (freshmen) cannot rush, means the actual percentage of soph/jrs/srs who are greek is closer to 49.3% (if my quick math is correct)
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Good point. I couldn’t find the specific stats but I believe percentage of women in Greek life higher than men.
My frat house is now a sorority house.
Fayetteville, Arkansas is another
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We currently live in MI, but we used to live in Illinois, and I went to UIUC for grad school. When my son was looking at engineering programs a couple years ago UIUC ticked all the boxes - ranking, outcomes, distance from home, etc. - but my son did not apply there even though with his record he was a likely admit. When we still lived in IL we went to UIUC for the Science Olympiad state championship, and we were all amazed at how run down the school looked. Granted, we did not get near any of the new engineering buildings or labs, but the buildings on the main quad were just run down.
My son did, however, apply to Purdue, which checked all the same boxes. In contrast to UIUC, the buildings at Purdue were well maintained or recently renovated. We joked that Purdue is what UIUC would want to be if it were better resourced.
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