WSJ article on students from the Northeast choosing southern publics

Huge difference between Alabama and Mississippi vs. places like GA Tech or Rice. GA Tech is something like 35-40% Asian. Emory also has a very high Asian%

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The years of about 1975–1980 were probably influential for The Official Preppy Handbook (1980), in which only one Ivy, Princeton, made the ā€œTop Ten.ā€

For sure. I’m just describing what I’ve observed from our mediocre school district. The best and the brightest generally did not head south, and the students that did…did not head to GATech or Rhodes. More like Florida Atlantic, UTampa, Eastern Carolina.

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As a side note, nothing against Rhodes but I don’t think it’s anywhere close to par with GA Tech…Tech is very competitive.

Small schools with more focused majors (and less majors) that attract certain populations. Purdue - as an example - has a high Asian population.

But ga tech and Emory are in diverse areas. That matters too for many applicants. The others aren’t.

Curious what you mean by GA Tech and Emory are in diverse areas? Higher % of Black people or Asian people? Tuscaloosa is 50% White, 43% Black, so pretty diverse

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Those are 2 very different schools. But with Rhodes 1/3 premed and 1/3 pre-law and 1/3 everything else with 90% of kids who had 4.0 in HS from all major cities, believe me they are working very very hard there. No free As there. I was blown away by level of students there. Yes, they are not Engineering ones like at Gatech but they are all hard working ones (with exception of some athletes.)

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That’s fair - I guess city vs. rural - but if that’s the stats, you are right.

Certain people have comfort in certain environments.

Here’s another twist - some of the southern schools have been accused of recruiting only in wealthy counties - which might also be a reason for such whiteness.

Study: Public universities focus recruitment on high schools that serve wealthy and white students | CNN

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My two cents is we are sort of just reconfirming that generalizing about schools in any given region isn’t going to make much sense because the schools in that region are going to be diverse among each other. There can be overlapping demand, of course, but overall the submarkets for an LAC, a medium-sized private research university, a large public tech-focused college, and a large public general-interest college, are all going to be different.

Numbers-wise, though, those last two categories are likely going to be where most of the action is, because that is where most of the students are. This is particularly true in the South because for various historic reasons, there are relatively few prominent LACs and private research universities in the South, particularly once you get very far into the Deep South.

And then actually, although the WSJ named Georgia Tech up top, and even featured them in the title photo, they did not otherwise seem to make a concrete case it was a particularly big contributor to the overall trend. In fact, Georgia generally was not particularly high in the ā€œStudents Head Southā€ charts, lower than California and around the same level as Indiana and Wisconsin in fact. The really big gainers were Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee.

They did say Georgia Tech had seen a bigger spike in application interest than Ivies. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that spike has been driven by a regional shift. Indeed, it seems to me the logical first explanation is that Tech has benefited from rising student demand for . . . tech. Which means comparing Tech to Ivies may not be apples to apples.

Anyway, I again am not suggesting there has been no demand shift at all. I just think one needs to be cautious about attributing every demand shift to regional effects, or assuming that every college in a region is equally subject to demand shifts.

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Asian families have a higher median net worth than Whites statistically and live primarily in affluent communities with excellent high schools. I think it is a rural vs city thing.

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The article did not provide any great revelations. It has been common knowledge for decades that public universities get much of their funding from OOS and international students paying full freight. In effect, these students are subsidizing the lower tuition for in-state students.

It is also logical that colleges would recruit from highly ranked public high schools in upper middle class zip codes. First, the families can pay full freight. Second, the students will be prepared academically. Third, the families and graduates are likely to support the school with donations in the future. I think it is a function of preparedness and ability to pay (and subsidize in-state and less well-off students), not racial discrimination.

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My daughter loves her southern school, and appreciates living in a new different environment. From day one she said she was 100% coming back to NJ, and she already accepted a job offer starting next July. The COL is higher, but her starting salary reflects this. She really likes the NYC metro area.

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Asian are concentrated mostly in two areas. California and metro DC.

Not true at all.

Demographics of Asian Americans - Wikipedia.

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Regarding the chatter about Asian students, it looks like the ā€œreally big gainersā€ of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee flagships are not attracting many Asian students. Their Asian enrollment is only 2% (AL, MS) or 4% (TN), despite high out-of-state enrollments (64% at AL, 63% at MS, 45% at TN). In contrast, it looks like they are very attractive to White students (73% at AL, 78% at MS, 79% at TN) but not many minorities in general.

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Plus Chicago, Boston and NYC. That is official statistics. It does not mean there are no Asian people in other areas.
Look at your link by counties and you will see CA, metro DC and NYC.

Don’t forget Hawaii.

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Maybe someone who actually is Asian - although that is obviously a very broad category that is hard to generalize about - can give us some perspective about why some schools in the South are preferred vs others, or not at all.

Just because someone is Asian (I am not) doesn’t mean that they can speak for ā€œAsiansā€ in general - Asians aren’t a monolith.

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