Elite Colleges Still Favoring Kids from Private Schools?

Parents Forum
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<p>This isn’t reflected in where Californians actually enroll. Here are the percentages of Californians in the 2010 entering class at the Ivies (figures from U.S. Dept. of Education): Brown 15.6%, Princeton 14.5%, Harvard 14.2%, Columbia 13%, Dartmouth 12.7%, Yale 12%, Penn 8.9%, Cornell 8.5%. Apart from Penn and Cornell, those figures are quite consistently high, equaling or exceeding California’s share of the nation’s population (12%).</p>

<p>But they don’t stop there. Californians also made up 16.2% of the entering class at MIT that year; 11.9% at Carnegie Mellon; 11.7% at Georgetown; 10.2% at Chicago; 9.8% at Johns Hopkins; 9.1% at WUSTL; 8.8% at Notre Dame; 8.5% at Duke; 8.5% at Rice; 8% at Northwestern. Although they represent a smaller percentage of a much larger freshman class, 297 Californians–more than enrolled at any of the aforementioned private colleges–enrolled as freshmen at Michigan that year, making California the fourth-largest source of the university’s enrollment after Michigan, New York, and Illinois.</p>

<p>And yes, Californians do attend OOS and out-of-region LACs as well. They represented 15% of the entering class at Wellesley in 2010; 14.9% at Vassar; 14% at Williams; 13.5% at Wesleyan; 13% at Amherst; 11.9% at Grinnell; 11.6% at Smith; 11.4% at Swarthmore; 10.5% at Carleton.</p>

<p>I’m not saying there aren’t Californians with the “HYP or bust” view you describe, but there are plenty of others who are willing to travel out-of-state and out-of-region to attend top colleges, public and private. In fact, the enrollment numbers suggest that Californians are much more likely than residents of other regions to go outside their home region for college. One place they tend to avoid, though, is the South. Californians represented just 3.1% of the entering class at Washington & Lee in 2010; 3.8% at Vanderbilt; 4.6% at Davidson; and 6.2% at Emory. More attended Duke, but Duke is often perceived as more of an Eastern school than a Southern one.</p>

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<p>Well, I apologize to the OP for derailing the thread…</p>

<p>Back on topic, does anyone have data for how many students Stuy, TJ, and the BASIS schools send to HYP?</p>

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<p>There are many threads on this topic, but I would consider the top tier to be the 25 highest ranked national research universities plus the top 15 highest ranked LACs, but I defer to those who would know more accurately. On the other hand, I consider schools with a PA above 4.0 to be elite (yes, even Michigan).</p>

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<p>Hard to know exactly where the applicants are from; as far as I know, the data aren’t publicly available. But if you look at the composition of each school’s entering class, the University of Chicago and WUSTL get a more balanced geographic distribution than the Ivies. </p>

<p>The Ivies draw heavily from the Northeast, with Northeasterners generally in the range of 40 to 60% of their entering class, despite the fact that the Northeast is the least populous of the 4 regions recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau with just 18% of the nation’s population. Midwesterners account for 22% of the nation’s population but only around 10% of the entering class at most Ivies. The Southeast is the most populous region with 37% of the nation’s population, but Southeasterners comprise only 10 to 15% of the entering class at most Ivies. Westerners (23% of the population) appear to be better represented at the Ivies, but that’s a bit of an optical illusion because it’s really only Californians (12% of the nation’s population) who are well represented, generally with 10 to 15% of the Ivies’ entering class. Adding in the rest of the West brings the region’s total up only slightly.</p>

<p>Here are the figures for the Fall, 2010 freshman class, as supplied by the U.S. Dept. of Education:</p>

<p>Brown: Northeast 48.1%; Midwest 8.6%; Southeast 10%; West 19.9% (California 15.6%)
Columbia: Northeast 50.7%; Midwest 7.7%; Southeast 13.6%, West 17.2% (California 13%)
Cornell: Northeast 62.4%, Midwest 6.3%, Southeast 9.1%, West 12.2% (California 8.5%)
Dartmouth: Northeast 48.6%, Midwest 11.1%, Southeast 12.6%, West 19.1% (California 12.7%)
Harvard: Northeast 42%, Midwest 11.2%, Southeast 15.1%, West 19.4% (California 14.2%)
Penn: Northeast 54.9%, Midwest 8.2%, Southeast 11.8%, West 13.0% (California 8.9%)
Princeton: Northeast 45.2%, Midwest 10%, Southeast 12.7%, West 18.9% (California 14.5%)<br>
Yale: Northeast 42.3%, Midwest 11.3%, Southeast 14.7%, West 17.6% (California 12%)</p>

<p>It’s particularly notable that every Ivy draws more Californians than Midwesterners, some nearly twice as many, even though Midwesterners are nearly twice as numerous as Californians. I don’t fault the Ivies for this. I think it’s just a reflection of the fact that most Midwesterners aren’t terribly prestige-obsessed, feel they have perfectly adequate options closer to home, and generally don’t give a hoot about the Ivies. Same is more or less true for Southerners, with California representing about as large a share of the Ivies’ entering class as the Southeast, even though the Southeast has three times California’s population.</p>

<p>In contrast, Chicago and WUSTL are more balanced between the Midwest and Northeast, though they only do about as well as the Ivies in attracting Westerners and Southerners:</p>

<p>Chicago: Northeast 27%, Midwest 31.5%, Southeast 13%, West 16.5% (California 10.2%)
WUSTL: Northeast 27.6%, Midwest 32.2%, Southeast 17.2%, West 15.1% (California 9.2%)</p>

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<p>bclintonk, obviously you’ve done much more of your homework and much better than I have. I suppose my impression came from a subset of Californians who happen to have the “Harvard or bust” attitude. I now realize this is far from the whole picture. On the other hand, at least two posters in this thread somehow convinced me that Californians are more inclined to stay in the UC system or schools like USC because in general CA residents are not as Ivy or top school “obsessed” as people from the east and they believe UC’s/USC etc. close to home are just as great as Ivies. Anyway, that post of mine turned out having very little value.</p>

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<p>No, it had great value. It caused me to investigate.</p>

<p>I think the figures I posted suggest at least some subset of Californians are prestige-obsessed, but that doesn’t stop with HYP. Though it’s certainly true that far more Californians stay at home and attend the UCs, and they attend Stanford, USC, and the Claremont Colleges is far larger numbers than they attend any similarly prestigious school in the Northeast or Midwest. Here are the percentages of Californians in the 2010 entering class at some California private colleges and universities:</p>

<p>Stanford 37.5%
USC 58.2%
Caltech 31.1%
Pomona 33%
Claremont McKenna 47.9%
Harvey Mudd 42.8%</p>

<p>And of course the sheer numbers at the UCs are astronomical.</p>

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<p>Bclintonk, I’ve thrown all the info you gave me into a spreadsheet to calculate the indexes (which is the only way the comparisons make sense). </p>

<p>Can you throw in this same info</p>

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<p>for whatever subset of top universities and / or LAC’s you think are worth investigating? I don’t know how to post a spreadsheet, but the results indicate that it’s like falling off a log – the Ivies are, absolutely by far, with indexes in the 250-350 range, concentrated in the Northeast. But somehow I never see a thread that says “How come the Ivies favor the Northeast?” LOL. But yeah, it absolutely shows very clearly that they are still regional draws.</p>

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<p>I picked on Yale but it’s pretty representative of the Ivies. Here’s the INDEX (which is the only meaningful measure) in terms of its draw regionally, vs Chicago and WUSTL.</p>

<p>So much for all of those people who think that if they go to Yale, they’ll find a more nationally representative student body than WUSTL where they think they’ll be stuck amongst only Midwesterners. </p>

<p>The other Ivies profile very similarly to Yale.</p>

<p>Sorry, highly regional draws! (which is, of course, a “no duh” for anyone who’s ever stepped foot outside the East Coast) </p>

<pre><code> Yale Chicago WUSTL
</code></pre>

<p>NE 235 150 153
Midw 51 143 146
SE 40 35 46
West 77 72 66</p>

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<p>^ great stuff. Next question … do you have the ratios for other top school in other regions? In other words are the ivies more regional than any other school. (Like how I tried to pawn off work on someone else).</p>

<p>From the above it looks like Stanford is 300 (just CA never mind all of the west … USC 450 (again only CA … etc. </p>

<p>This would be pretty interesting to see.</p>

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<p>I have the formulas in a spreadsheet. Feed me the inputs per post 306 from whatever college and I’ll throw it all in. Unfortunately, I don’t know a way to post the whole spreadsheet, but if someone does, I’ll mail it to them. </p>

<p>Note: bclinton’s numbers apparently exclude international students. There’s no “normative” %-of-students-who-are-international to use, so the total column adds to 100 and the college columns add up to 90 (or whatever). But the patterns of the indexes will absolutely remain the same.</p>

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<p>3togo - Post 307 shows that the Ivies are more regional than Chicago and WUSTL.</p>

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<p>^^But Northeasterners are more “non regional” than the Midwesterners as they are more willing to venture out of state/region for schooling.</p>

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<p>@298</p>

<p>Pizzagirl</p>

<p>I don’t know if it’s a no brainier or not. I think it is but others don’t. I was primarily responding to the posts suggesting that data from Brown and Stanford supports the position that it is not the no brainier many believe it to be.</p>

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<p>That’s correct. These figures are from U.S. Dept. of Education and they represent the percentages of domestic U.S. students in the Fall 2010 entering class at each college.</p>

<p>PG, I’ll PM you with a way I might get you figures for a few more schools.</p>

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<p>No, Benley, the data doesn’t show that at all. You’d need a different set of data to prove or disprove that. But you’d have to do it at the region level vs the state level, because of the presence of many small states in the NE. IOW, you don’t get to credit a kid from CT as being “adventurous” because he goes out of state to RI because he has many states within a very easy driving distance whereas the kid from MN or CA doesn’t. The unit of analysis is critical.</p>

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<p>OK, here are the regional breakdowns for a few more schools. I’ll let PG normalize them to regional population.</p>

<p>Northwestern: Northeast 22.6%, Midwest 45.7%, South 12.5%, West 11.6% (California 8%)
Duke: Northeast 32.1%, Midwest 8.2%, Southeast 34.2%, West 14.1% (California 8.5%)
Vanderbilt: Northeast 23,2%, Midwest 18.5%, Southeast 45.3%, West 6.3% (California 3.6%)
Emory: Northeast 27.6%, Midwest 8.8%, Southeast 53.3%, West 10.3% (California 6.2%)
Stanford: Northeast 16.5%, Midwest 8.9%, Southeast 12.2%, West 50% (California 37.5%)
USC: Northeast 12.2%, Midwest 8.3%, Southeast 9.1%, West 66.1% (California 58.2%)</p>

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<p>I will - but am on iPad now, so will have to wait til tomorrow, guys!</p>

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<p>And a few more:</p>

<p>Notre Dame: Northeast 25.4%, Midwest 42.9%, Southeast 17%, West 14.7% (California 8.8%)
MIT: Northeast 41.4%, Midwest 15.9%, Southeast 20.7%, West 21.9% (California 16.2%)
Carnegie Mellon: Northeast 61.4%, Midwest 10.7%, Southeast 10.9%, West 17% (California 11.9%)
Johns Hopkins: Northeast 64.8%, Midwest 10.4%, Southeast 9.9%, West 14.9% (California 9.8%)
Georgetown: Northeast 59.2%, Midwest 10.9%, Southeast 13.7%, West 16.1% (California 11.7%)
Rice: Northeast 13.3%, Midwest 7%, Southeast 65.2%, West 14.4% (California 8.5%)</p>

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<p>This is getting interesting. So it looks like Northeasterners not only dominate the colleges at east coast, but are making major contribution in diversifying the colleges in other parts of the country. (And looking closely, it looks like Californians are doing the same thing) Is it that Midwestern schools are doing a better job in diversifying its student body by purposefully turning down more of the qualified applicants from their own area or is it a result of a thin supply of qualified or interested applicants from their own area? It feels like Midwesterners are indeed not “prestige obsessed”. They not only don’t care about the Ivies but also don’t care that much about the top schools in their own area.</p>

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<p>As has been said over and over and over again, a lot of the big state flagships in the Midwest are considered top schools. There is not the big “step down” between Elite schools and state schools as there is in the East Coast. No one thinks twice about the valedictorian choosing U Mich, U Wisconsin, U of I the way there is in the east with the valedictorian choosing, say, Penn State or U Mass. It just isn’t as necessary for success here. The affluent upper middle class suburban life in the Midwest is exactly the same as the upper middle class suburban life on the East, which a lot of easterners don’t understand. </p>

<p>I am from the northeast so I get the mentality.</p>

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<p>Benley, saying that NEers “dominate” the Ivies is another way of saying - the Ivies don’t have national representation but draw primarily from their backyards. The “ideal balanced school” would have indexes close to 100 for all regions. Chicago and WUSTL do a far better job of getting national representation vs Yale. I’m sorry to slay the sacred cow here.</p>