"But I am calling the BS police that every kid in the Midwest is looking for merit aid and is much too sophisticated to fall prey to the stupidity which is the Ivy League. "
There are pockets - mostly upper middle class suburban pockets in the Midwest - where yes, “the list” looks similar to the NE (though maybe a bit more NU, Notre Dame, U Chicago, WashU, Vandy). For me, the difference seems to be the extent to which the Ivy (etc) names are known in other socioeconomic groups, not just the 1%ers. In my personal experience, the difference was that even in my blue-collar environment, people had heard of amd were impressed by Penn, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, etc. Here in the Midwest, I just find that awareness of the elite schools is still more upper middle class limited.
I think some of these where you live therefore what schools you apply to arguments are just silly. The vast majority of all students, regardless of where they live apply to and attend instate colleges and universities. For example, in NYS - there are 64 SUNY schools with 419K undergraduate students at 4 year schools and 239K at community colleges. That is a very high number of students not at any “elite” institution.
Most students, no matter where they live, do not apply to any Ivy or top 20 school or any private college at all.
Regarding the midwest being in to ivies discussion, obviously, there are thousands of kids from the midwest who apply to ivies, many of who who are quite interested in attending. It’s no surprise that an interviewer in the midwest would be busy. However, this does not mean that this ivy sentiment represents more than a small minority, nor does it mean that there is similarly sized minority in the northeast. If you look at rate of matriculation to ivies per population, it’s tremendously higher in the northeast… comparing some states/colleges, it’s more than 10x higher in northeast than midwest. Assuming the number of applications in different states is highly correlated with number of matriculating students, this would suggest that students from the northeast as a whole are far more likely to apply to ives than students from the midwest. This result should not come as surprise since students are more likely to favor closer colleges. If you do the same comparison from Stanford, it shows more than 40% of the US students in the entering class come from California, a much higher rate of matriculation per population in CA than in northeast states or anywhere else. However, this does not mean most students in CA are in to Stanford or most students the northeast are in to ivies. Instead I agree with emiliybee above that this HYPSM focused group is a minority. As discussed earlier in the thread, it certainly was a minority in the upstate NY HS I attended. Along the same lines, I don’t agree with the earlier comparisons between the number of vals/sals in the country and number of ivy slots. Most of those vals/sals probably are not particularly interested in attending and did not apply to any ivies, especially those who attended non-selective public HSs located in more distant states from the northeast.
In my neck of the Midwest, the ivy applicants are not only mostly from the few upscale " pockets " pizzagirl mentioned, they seem to be concentrated in a few r eligious/ethnic/racial factions within those pockets. Nothing at all wrong with that, obviously, but it further reinforceces the notion that ivy lust is not at all an epidemic out here in flyover country. I went to high school and undergrad in the Northeast , and recognize ivy lust when I see it.
In my experience Jews, Catholics and Atheists are overrepresented, and Protestants are underrepresented at elite colleges. Is that what you are getting at?
When I informally survey my kids friends as to where they want to go to college, they invariably answer the school one of their parents attended or Stanford. Some of them add Northwestern or Notre Dame. I can’t remember anyone mentioning an Ivy yet.