<p>m2ck, my experience going from college in New England to graduate school in the not-too-deep South was different from yours. The move was even more jarring for my wife. Because I had grown up in the square states, I merely had to reacquaint myself with a zeitgeist I thought I’d left behind me. </p>
<p>My wife, however, was absolutely nonplussed to have medical-school classmates who’d never met a Jew before. One of her classmates told her, “I didn’t realize there still were Jews.” She thought Judaism had died out, like worship of Baal, or something. Another one asked her, incredulously but sincerely, “You mean y’all never been to a pig-pickin’?” I admit, these are extreme examples, but they are not made up.</p>
<p>Maybe the popularity of Seinfeld has narrowed that particular facet of the cultural divide. But I think all you need to do is to look at any recent electoral map to see that there is still a huge political distance between the urban centers on the Coasts and around the Great Lakes on one hand, and the less urban areas of the South and Midwest. Look at political advertising from those different areas, and I think you’ll see that the political differences reflect and result from major cultural and philosophical differences. I believe the South remains much churchier than the Coasts and the Great Lakes, for example. You could like that difference, dislike it, or be indifferent to it, but I think it’s real.</p>
<p>My experience at [name of respected Southern state flagship redacted] was that although the people who ran the University (faculty, deans, etc.) were from all over and included a lot of carpetbaggers like me, the undergraduate population was much less diverse. Furthermore, this completely neglects the fact that students do come into contact with locals: they work in staff positions at the University; they work in the Safeway and the Winn-Dixie. Perhaps as a graduate student I came into contact with the community much more than the undergraduates did. I liked many things about life in that college town, but I did often feel like an outsider, too.</p>
<p>By no means am I suggesting that the OP should not go to Auburn. I merely offer the opinion that he should not go to Auburn naively. I’d offer the same advice to an Alabamian who was considering Northwestern.</p>
<p>Why do we not offer the same culture-shock warning to students planning to go abroad? Interesting question. Perhaps it is because we all expect that Cairo, Egypt, will be very different from Cairo, Illinois, but some of us have been surprised how different New Boston, Texas, is from Boston, Mass.</p>
<p>My opinion. YMMV.</p>