<p>While waiting on some workers to get to my house, I compiled a list of the US News Top 50 schools and their distance to the closest respective Top 50 school at an equal or higher rank. For instance, Harvard and Princeton tied at number one in the US News Ranking so the distance is that between them. </p>
<p>Geographical Range Rank, Miles, School, US News Rank
1 662 Chicago 8
2 630 U Washington 42
3 341 Duke 10
4 321 Cal Tech 4
4 321 Stanford 4
6 317 Tulane 50
7 308 UF 47
8 299 U Miami 50
9 272 Tufts 28
10 260 Wash U 12
11 254 Carnegie Mellon 22
12 248 Rochester 35
13 232 Harvard 1
13 232 Princeton 1
15 217 Wisconsin 39
16 215 Emory 17
16 215 Vandy 17
18 174 Cornell 15
19 146 Rice 17
19 146 UT Austin 47
21 136 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 39
22 135 U Mich 27
23 134 RPI 42
24 124 Georgetown 23
25 113 Cas Western Reserve 41
25 113 Penn State 47
27 112 Yale 3
27 112 UNC 28
27 112 William and Mary 33
30 109 Dartmouth 11
31 99 UCSD 35
32 98 UVA 24
33 88 Johns Hopkins 14
34 84 UC Santa Barbara 42
35 71 Notre Dame 20
36 63 Wake Forest 28
37 54 UC Davis 42
38 49 Columbia 8
39 46 Lehigh 35
40 45 UC Irvine 46
41 40 Brown 16
42 39 Penn 4
43 31 UC Berkeley 21
44 19 Northwestern 12
44 19 UCLA 24
46 9 USC 26
47 7 Brandeis 31
48 6 NYU 32
49 4 Boston College 34
49 4 Ga Tech 35
51 2 MIT 4</p>
<p>Obviously this is less relevant the more you get into the Northeast where the public transportation provides easier access to other states and the state size diminishes greatly. It's also skewed by (or rather not controlled for) population density. I do think it's interesting though and helped me pass the time.</p>
<p>If you all find something that appears wrong, please correct it. I'm done for the time being waiting around.</p>