Harvard, Yale, and Stanford are probably the only schools that most people have heard of, and the only schools that most people know have a great reputation.
@bclintonk I didn’t mean to compare Harvard and UMich in any way other than in name recognition (and just “recognition” in terms of where they fall in the perceived “prestige barometer”). There’s no value judgement here. At least one poster certainly questions often about even HYP’s national/international name recognition without trying to make any distinction from all others. Now, when I say that dozens of colleges have more appeal to non-local applicants than others, I actually consider UMich among those dozens. Like Penn and Dartmouth, it is one of the colleges that appeal to high achieving high school graduates from a more broad geographic region than its home state… So I stand by the position that not all (even outside of HYPSM) are equally “local”. Some are more national/international recognized than others (and for reasons other than sports).
That being said, I realize I’m making a trivial point that has little impact. After all, what difference does it make to know the fact that some schools are better known than others. If you already know a school, why do you need others to tell you that you should know it? However, I think it is also wrong to repeat this message over and over that knowledge about colleges is simply like you local news - you know and you care because you live here. That is not the reality.
I assume many of the Penn applications are to Wharton. Princeton doesn’t have a business school. Also probably some to Penn Nursing. On the other hand, judging from SAT score reports, it looks like more New Jersey kids also apply to Cornell than to Princeton.
New Jersey SAT score reports to US News top 50, Fall 2015 admissions cycle:
NYU 4,624
Northeastern 4,183
Boston U 4,026
Penn 3,490
Cornell 3,391
Princeton 3,083
Lehigh 2,654
Columbia 2,554
Michigan 2,420
Boston College 2,400
Johns Hopkins 2,169
Carnegie Mellon 1,891
UVA 1,853
Somewhat surprisingly (to me, at least), Harvard doesn’t make New Jersey’s top 50. Nor does Yale, Stanford, or MIT.
I’d add MIT in STEM to HYS.
Actually, it’s more like H&S + MIT in STEM and Yale in humanities. Beyond that, and it can be pretty regional/cultural in terms of schools that kids dream of attending.
@PurpleTitan So UMich and Mich State are equally regional? So are there distinctions in “localness” among colleges outside of HYPSM in relative terms at all?
Y.A.W.N…
@panpacific, do you like putting words in people’s mouths? Or is it that you have poor logic skills? How exactly did you infer that I thought that “UMich and MSU are equally regional” (which I don’t) from “rankings can be pretty regional after HSMY”?
Isn’t this ranking published by Steve Forbes, the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine and the guy who supports Donald Trump of the Trump University fame? Anyone really takes this magazine seriously?
@purpleTitan Glad we finally reached some type of consensus. Hope I haven’t just put words in your mouth again! Cheers
“As I said, though, Harvard is a special case. Everyone’s heard of it, everyone’s heard it’s great. Penn or Dartmouth? Not so much. I can say pretty confidently these schools just aren’t on the radar screens of most Minnesotans, except in two or three of the wealthiest suburban districts and three or four of the most exclusive private high schools and among the families of academics. The same is true in Michigan where I lived for many years and still have family. The same is substantially true in Illinois except in a handful of wealthy suburbs, mostly on the North Shore.”
We say this again and again - that outside the NE the Ivies don’t have the level of special sparkle they do in the NE (except in wealthy enclaves) and for whatever reason people don’t believe it!
Re: Ivies special sparkle:
Northeast, wealthy enclaves, and some low-information (first gen/immigrant/international) folks, from what I observe.
@TiggerDad there you go!
No one ever said all colleges are “equally local.” You’re arguing against a straw man of your own creation. My point was that even at the most elite levels of U.S. post-secondary education, the market is much more regionally skewed than many people on CC seem to think. Take Penn as a case in point. According to data provided by the Chronicle of Higher Education from U.S. Department of Education statistics, in the 2010 admissions cycle Penn drew 44% of its entering class from just 3 states—Pennsylvania, plus the geographically contiguous states of New Jersey and New York.Throw in other states along the Boston-Washington corridor and it pushes you to 60% of Penn’s entering class, even through these states comprise less than 20% of the nation’s population. That’s a pretty heavy regional skew. It’s not to say it’s “all local.” In fact, Penn drew at least one student from every state, so to that extent it has some kind of national reputation and national draw. But the point is that in proportion to their share of the nation’s college-bound seniors in any given year, far fewer students outside the Northeast Corridor are interested in, apply to, are accepted by, and choose to attend Penn than is the case among students in Penn’s home region. And with extremely few outliers (Duke and Oberlin, which both draw disproportionately from the Northeast), that pattern holds for all colleges and universities, public and private, elite and not so elite.
That’s not to say the regional skew is the same. for all colleges. In 2010, Penn State drew 63.9% of its freshman class from Pennsylvania. Temple drew 76% of its freshmen from Pennsylvania, and Shippensburg State drew 92.5% of its students from Pennsylvania. To be fair, these are public universities whose primary mission is to serve in-state residents, but less-elite privates also tend to be more heavily local than the elites. Duquesne, for example, drew 73% of its freshmen from Pennsylvania in 2010. But none of that undercuts my point that even at the most elite levels, there’s a heavier regional skew than many people on CC realize. Most students apparently prefer not to stray too far away from home, even if they have outstanding academic credentials.
@bclintonk any reason that so many Northerners go to Duke??
Going back to the discussion several pages back re who’s heard of Wellesley, I had to chuckle when Bill Maher referred to Hillary Clinton Friday night on his show as a former “valedictorian at Wesleyan.”
Love him or hate him, the guy is a “West Coast elite,” who grew up in NJ and graduated from Cornell. Of course he’s also childless so maybe he’s forgotten what he used to know.
@bclintonk What did I say? I am not questioning your research and analysis on the regional skew of undergraduate student body in all colleges, and I provided a similar explanation as yours. What I disagree is the assertion that this regional skew in undergraduate student body is a reliable indicator of the different levels of national recognition of colleges. For example, Georgetown could have a similar level of regional skew with a number of other colleges, but when a Georgetown graduate goes out of state/region and reaches potential graduate school deans/professors and HR/employers (not the local Walgreen), chances are they know Georgetown and know it is a better college (of course, there are so many factors regarding graduates employability, but that’s a topic for many other threads) So I say even colleges of similar regional skew in student body are not “equally” local. In that sense, I suppose USN is taking peer assessment (which in effect is a “reputation test”) into its ranking for that reason.
I think that’s precisely what it indicates! People apply to where they know. The list of what they know to be desirable / top schools varies highly by region.
We did this analysis. I wish there were a way to post the data on CC. It was abundantly clear - we had the top 20 RU’s and top 20 LAC’s and, to the best of my recollection, it was only Duke and Oberlin that were not “overskewed” to home region. The Ivies are very, very northeast skewed. The finding surprised a lot of the Ivy grads on here.
Here’s an anecdote, which of course is not data, but I’ll say it anyway. I was on a plane sitting next to a man who had grown up in New England, gone to Middlebury and had since moved to Chicago. I had not revealed my Northwestern affiliation (self, spouse, son) at this point in the discussion. He said, spontaneously, “I didn’t realize that Northwestern means to Chicago what Harvard means to Boston. I thought Harvard had the same presence everywhere.” Now, I don’t want to get into a match about NU vs U of Chicago; that’s not my point. The point was - he had that provincial mindset that because he was sitting in New England where Harvard was revered, that it was equally revered everywhere. Of course Harvard isn’t chopped liver, but I don’t think you guys really get that it is different in different parts of the country. Elite families in Texas who could buy and sell all of us for lunch would rather send their kids to Texas than to Princeton, and so form.
Regarding the regional distribution of the student body, while it does correlate with name recognition, there are numerous other factors. For example, in my opinion UCLA is one of the most recognized college names in the United States. This fits with their huge number of applications – over 100,000 last year, which is far more than HYPSM…, perhaps more than any other college in the United States. Their out-of-state name recognition was probably even greater in the past, when they had a greater degree of athletic success. For example, ~10 years ago, UCLA had some great men’s basketball years, including a national championship appearance, which enhanced they already high level of national recognition, yet ~97% of the non-international members of the entering class came from California 10 years ago. Hardly anyone came from out of state.
This does not indicate UCLA had almost no out-of-state name recognition back when they had a national championship level basketball team. Instead it more indicates that there are other factors beyond name recognition that also contribute to students favoring nearer schools, such as in state students getting a substantially lower price than out of state students at UCLA, UCLA favoring admitting in state students over out of state students 10 years ago (the UC system has completely changed their stance in this area recently, favoring higher paying out-of-state students over in state), UCLA having a greater degree of in state special connections (beyond just name recognition) than out of state, UCLA-type students being more likely to want/need to be nearer to home and/or family, SES differences at different schools (lower SES are tremendously more likely to favor nearer schools than higher SES), etc.
I don’t think you can read too much into the in-state v. OOS split at public universities. Their primary mission is to serve state residents. Some have hard caps or quotas on how many OOS students they can enroll, others have softer and more flexible targets. It’s an entirely different ballgame for private colleges and universities which operate under no such geographical constraints.