Truman State is a very good undergrad school, very LAC-like, and attracts very good students across Missouri. It is, however, in Kirksville, a small, boring town in middle of nowhere whereas Columbia (Mizzou) is a decent college town also near the state capital. Both Mizzou and Truman have strong Greek systems. Mizzou has many, many more majors than Truman, so it enrolls some top kids that are in majors that Truman doesn’t offer. Missouri as a state is weird also in that the best engineering program is at Missouri S & T, not Mizzou, which pulls kids in yet a third direction; AND Missouri State has had more political clout for the last decade, so a lot of resources that should have gone to Mizzou were pulled down to Missouri State in Springfield (but it still lags far behind Mizzou or Truman for top students). Most top students at least consider Truman, so there really isn’t an inferiority complex issue, just different tastes. Oh, and Truman is cheaper than Mizzou by a few thousand a year.