<p>Yes.</p>
<p>I moved from the Mediterranean to New Jersey and it was tough.</p>
<p>I would make sure that you knew what to expect. Have you ever been to the south for any great length of time? You might come down here and hate the climate.</p>
<p>noooooooooooooooooooo</p>
<p>I don’t think it should be the most important factor but it is one to consider (as is some other important ones).</p>
<p>I, for example, am from PA and chose to go to a school in the south (University of South Carolina) and the weather was actually a big part of my decision. I do not like the cold and love how warm it is down here, although it’s pretty cold right now :). I could not be happier with my choice because I know I would be miserable if it were always cold outside.</p>
<p>I chose NU over Emory. Including weather and barring specifically personal reasons, that might have been a tough call. Excluding weather its an obvious choice. So I’d say no, ignore weather.</p>
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<p>It sounds like you have strong feeling about disliking frigid, windy weather and would like to try something new. I think that is completely understandable. In my case, I despise hot, humid weather and would rather live in Chicago than in most places in the south, but that is me.</p>
<p>As some others have mentioned, parts of New England are not quite so cold as Chicago, and you might not mind them so much. I lived in Wisconsin and in western Massachusetts, and Wisconsin is colder. However, New England does have real winters, weeks of gloomy skies and some years, lots of snow.</p>
<p>Wash U St. Louis has some winter, interspersed with mild temps. Vanderbilt (Nashville) has mild winters, usually (but my son is probably getting cold toes in his sandals this week!). Rice (Houston) has mild weather during the school year, albeit a bit warm in the summer. There are many other good schools, some distant from Chicago and some not so far, that offer milder winter climates than Chicago. There is no need to choose a school whose weather makes it hard for you to enjoy yourself.</p>
<p>Even if one does not consider the weather, I think it would be good for you to move away from Chicago, just to experience another location.</p>
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<p>How on earth is that NOT what the South’s weather is cracked up to be? I grew up there so maybe I am missing something…do people not from there actually have this image of perfect weather?</p>
<p>As others have said, not all of New England is cold in the way that Chicago or the Upper Midwest is cold. It doesn’t normally get that cold on, say, the coast of Massachusetts. The catch is that though winters are milder, they last a very long time. It’s one of the few things I dislike about the Boston area.</p>
<p>thanks everybody for their very helpful posts!</p>
<p>I probably won’t make weather my number one excluding factor, but i will definitely take it into heavy consideration when choosing between schools that i already like. </p>
<p>The thing with me is that i need to get out in the sunlight most days in order to feel productive, otherwise i just feel draggy and gloomy. It would be nice to go somewhere where i could just go out for a mid-day jog or walk around outside without getting frostbite.</p>
<p>you should consider it, but that shouldn’t have to be the deciding factor</p>
<p>Yes, and no. If you really love Yale or Harvard or any other school in the Northeast, you shouldn’t let the snow get into your way. However, if you just so happen to love Stanford or some other school in California and get in, then that may influence your decision to go there.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t… UNLESS you feel that the weather is going to distract you so much or make you so miserable that it might lower the quality of the work you do in college. In that case, go to Cali or the South. </p>
<p>Speaking as somebody with oftentimes-severe Seasonal Affective Disorder from Philadelphia who hasn’t applied to a single college outside metro Boston, I know it’s going to be something I’ll have to deal with, but I’m ready, for love of the place in which I’m going to be living.</p>
<p>" If you really love Yale or Harvard or any other school in the Northeast, you shouldn’t let the snow get into your way."</p>
<p>Visit places like that in the winter to find out if snow will get in the way.
You’re fortunate that the U.S. has a variety of climates and a variety of excellent colleges in warm places, so don’t feel obligated to go to college in a snowy area if you hate snow.</p>
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Exactly. It’s not worth it to make yourself miserable. </p>
<p>For any really great sounding school in the snowy northeast, chances are there’s another one just like it in a warmer climate. If someone likes certain aspects of Yale and Harvard, they may like Stanford, Rice, or Duke even more, being of similar quality but with warmer weather. If someone likes the spirited BC, they’d probably love USC too. And so on.</p>
<p>If he lives in Chicago and picks a school near a decent airport, he should be able to get flights into O’Hare or Midway easily.</p>
<p>I’m sitting in northern Indiana. The winds are currently 20 mph and the wind chill is 10. That’s 20 degrees warmer than this past weekend. I feel the OP’s pain. 2+ months here are unbearable every year.</p>
<p>As other posters noted, there are many great schools throughout the country. I wouldn’t sacrifice academic quality for the weather, but I think you can stay warm and sunny without losing academic quality.</p>
<p>No you should not, you can just as easily make the excuse of not going to class because the weather is too beautiful as to not going because its raining or snowing or too cold. They’re really all the same.</p>
<p>“No you should not, you can just as easily make the excuse of not going to class because the weather is too beautiful as to not going because its raining or snowing or too cold. They’re really all the same.”</p>
<p>LOL! I take it you haven’t lived as I have in a part of the country with heavy snow and wind chill factors as low as -40 during the winter. Having lived in regions that are typically sunny and warm, and lived in regions that are the opposite, my experience is that it’s much easier to go out and do anything including going to class when the weather is to my liking.</p>
<p>I beleive your choice school should make you feel comfortable, and if you really hate the cold that much you should choose a school in a warmer climate. There are plenty of great schools inplaces you dont freeze your but off!</p>
<p>My daughters grew up in the South. They wanted to experience something different, so they both went north for college. There’s nothing wrong with trying something new. Cold weather? You’ve been there and done that. Like others have said, there are plenty of good schools in warmer climates.</p>
<p>Someone said it earlier, but nearly every school in the NE (or any cold weather region for that matter) likely has some school that is comparable, but in a warmer, more bearable climate. Therefore, why not only look at warm weather schools? This was my mentality coming out of undergrad. I was sick for the entire winter and had grown completely tired of consistently freezing winters. Oddly enough though, I went with a school that was in a colder climate (Univ. of Pittsburgh), and it really hasn’t mattered as much as I thought it would.</p>