NC HS graduates are most likely to go to one of these five Public schools (Charlotte: 2014, chapel)

[MrBojangles]

Info comes from here: College Bound: NC Counties and UNC School Attendance | Carolina Demography

[rnc2mbfl]

Interesting.
NC State is the only school that has majority enrollment from counties in the Piedmont, Coastal Plain and Mountains. I'm surprised that UNC only has a few counties in their column.
It would be interesting to see the second and third tier of these enrollment numbers as well.

[poppydog]

I would guess that's because UNC is harder to get in, so most high school graduates in a county are not going to be accepted to UNC. If it was worded differently and was the counties that send the most high school grads to UNC it would look quite different, but the way it is worded they're talking about all the high school grads in a particular county. Of all the Wake county high school grads, for example, (which I think is about 9000 per year), the majority ("most") are not accepted at UNC. If I have my info right UNC's freshmen class is about 3900 and of those 82% are from NC (3200).

[BullGoodBearBad]

Interesting that NC State is able to pull Carteret county from the East. I'd imagine it's pretty close. Not as surprised for New Hanover though.

[Jowel]

Thanks for sharing this, Mr. Bojangles! I imagine one reason NC State's attendees are more dispersed throughout the rural counties of the state is due it offering agricultural sciences curriculum that the other major state schools didn't focus on. Even if the number of traditional college aged students pursuing an agricultural related career path has dropped off dramatically, it may be that the parents/grandparents of the students were NC State Alumni, so attending was a proud family tradition.

Mecklenburg County is a little surprising due to its sheer size. Forsyth County (with significantly fewer students than Mecklenburg) ranks high for UNC students but Mecklenburg doesn't rank high with UNC or state. I can understand that UNC Charlotte would have a significant number of Mecklenburg county students, but I'm a little surprised not to see some movement from Mecklenburg to NC State.

Also, it's interesting that Forsyth County has more UNC students than Guilford, since Guilford is a larger county, is closer to UNC-CH, and the two are at least somewhat comparable in demographics.

[BullGoodBearBad]

Interesting that there's two counties that overlap.

[MrBojangles]

Originally Posted by BullGoodBearBad

Interesting that there's two counties that overlap.

They equally send the majority of their HS graduates who are going to a four-year to either school (ASU/UNC or ASU/NCSU).

[ScarletG]

There are lots of Wake grads at App State....so take these maps for what they are worth.

[LLN]

Of course one large county could send more grads to any school than 5 - 10 smaller counties. What is surprising is how little pull ECU has west of 95 and Happy Appy, east of I77. A statement for sure! A bunch of homers going to those schools!

[poppydog]

I tried to follow the links through on the data. The researched used "home base of students data" . The data instructions say, "For in-state students, the home base is the N.C. county of their permanent home address." I would hazard a guess they are relying on self-reported student info so I'm not sure if that reflects where the students are from or not. Seems to me the students could be reporting their college address as their permanent address. The permanent address thing also brings to mind the voter registration fracas.

I can't actually find the data for freshmen. I see the data for the university populations as a whole and for that at UNC Orange county is the clear leader, but presumably older students would be more likely to put down a Chapel Hill address as their permanent address. I'd really like to see the data on where the freshmen came from — the high schools they attended and the counties they were in, but I can find that info.