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4 1/2 decades ago, in a steel mill town west of Pittsburgh:
There is a small, Reformed Presbyterian Church college, Geneva College, in my hometown where a lot of my HS cohorts went. Our valedictorian went there. It was about the same price to go there and live at home as going to a state college (as they were called at the time) and living on campus. Most of the rest who went to college went to the close-by state colleges, e.g. Slippery Rock, Clarion and Indiana U of PA. A handful of us, including me, went to Pitt and another handful went to Penn State. Some went to Grove City and Westminster College, private colleges in W PA. Usually someone went to Carnegie-Mellon, but I can't think of anyone from my class that did. One of my cousins from the class ahead, and one from the class behind me went there (CMU).
Fast forward to my kids' classes in suburban Denver, 2002 and 2005:
Most kids went to the U of CO, Colorado State, Front Range CC and the U of Northern CO, in about that order. A few went to Colo. School of Mines. The most popular out of state college was Brigham Young U in Utah. When my older DD graduated, Arizona State was for some reason popular, as was the U of Washington. The valedictorian and salutatorian went to Stanford. A good friend of DD's went to Notre Dame, another to Boston U. Lots of Lutherans out here, St. Olaf, Gustavus, Pacific Lutheran and California Lutheran usually get a few. The valedictorian of the younger DD's class went to the University of Southern California. The salutatorian went to Carnegie Mellon.
Along with the fact that (I'm guessing) the suburb you now live in is more affluent (and with that, giving many kids less of a financial tether keeping them closer to/at home), people just tend to spread out more these days, though with the exception of some boarding schools, there will always be a bias to the immediate region.
Along with the fact that (I'm guessing) the suburb you now live in is more affluent (and with that, giving many kids less of a financial tether keeping them closer to/at home), people just tend to spread out more these days, though with the exception of some boarding schools, there will always be a bias to the immediate region.
I recall reading that it's about 80%/20% in-state v out-of-state. That seems to be the case at my kids' school. My school was probably about 95% in, 5% out, with most of the instaters staying within 100 miles of home.
I don't have stats, so my response is purely anecdotal. But I went to HS in a small town, at a rural consolidated high school in a predominantly agricultural/industrial area smack in the middle of the country.
Ivy Leagues were not common, even for our brightest, most academically high-achieving graduates (our students who were "Ivy League material" generally opted for schools like Northwestern University, University of Chicago, Washington University, Loyola University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Iowa, and liberal arts colleges like Grinnell, Cornell College, Carleton.
Heading east is not preferred for tons of midwestern kids, to be honest, even those at the top of their class. I got into a couple of Ivies (didn't intend to go, but my dad thought it would be fun to see if I got accepted), but instead opted for an idyllic and small private liberal arts college in a beautiful river valley in rural Minnesota that paid for my bachelor's degree almost in full.
Most of my classmates in HS did not attend a four-year college. Most went to our local community college for terminal associate's degrees, and/or attended trade school. The jobs in my hometown area were predominantly ag/industrial, and four-year degrees were not required for the majority of the positions the industries hired for at the time. This, of course, all changed when the economy tanked and factories and ag processing plants shuttered.
I graduated from a top 200 public high school in 2006. The typical breakdown was top students to Ga Tech or UGA, average students to GA State, below average students to Kennesaw State, Georgia Southern, North Ga College, or Valdosta State. A handful of people would go to Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, USC, Florida, and Florida State as well.
In my class, we also had 2 people go to West Point and had 1 or 2 each at Emory, Brandeis, Northwestern, and Rice. My class didn't have any Ivy Leaguers but we sent two to West Point (and another who, after a year in a military school, went to the Air Force Academy). Normally we had at least one person go to Harvard or MIT a year.
Georgia has the HOPE Scholarship for students who get over a 3.0 so people who go to private schools tend to have gotten REALLY good scholarships in order to pass on the the HOPE. I know I definitely did.
Most who went attended the local state college or one of the sister schools in the PA system. A couple went to Penn State and a couple more went to the private Grove City College. One went to Alfred for engineering and one went to Cornell.
But remember, this was 1972 when college attendance was not the norm. And even today, after a dcade and a half of college for all, that only about 28% of Americans have a degree.
As a note, most of my classmates who went to college didn't graduate. Just like today.
The top 20 from my high school went to these schools in various numbers:
Princeton
Texas Tech automatic acceptance to med school
Cornell
UT-Austin
Northwestern
OU (National Merit full ride)
UNC-Chapel Hill
Southwestern
Texas A&M
Emory
Brandeis
The more average students went to Texas Tech in droves, West Texas A&M, UT-San Antonio, and the local community college. The artsy ones went to School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of North Texas, and Texas State.
This year's graduating class is more impressive from my high school though. MIT, Yale, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, U Chicago, and that's just what I know of. Of course, since it is Lubbock, Texas Tech is by far the most popular choice.
**** my graduating class was if I remember right close to 600 people and we went all over.
The three biggest were still University of Florida, Florida State, Rollins College (private liberal arts college and MBA) and Seminole State College (the local community college) but in my circle I know people that went to MIT, Harvard, Rice, Air Force Academy, West Point, UPenn, Penn State, Columbia, Stanford, Cornell etc...
I don't know what all went on to do but I know one girl from UF went on to do a Master's at UChicago and is now doing her PhD at NM Institute of Mining & Technology. I'm not entirely up to date on what my friend that went to Harvard is doing now - his facebook says he's at a Medical Research Institute and he has his own Post-Grad page at Harvard but it also says Vanderbilt University which I have no idea about - he also travels as a famous classical musician. The friend I had that went to MIT is now getting his PhD from Princeton. The friend that went to Cornell is doing odd jobs and traveling because he's unemployed - he graduated I think 8th in our class. I studied the same thing as him at a public school and I'm working.
I went to a good public HS, graduating class of about 250. Top students went to Duke, Dartmouth, Caltech, Yale, Northwestern, Notre Dame, UC-Berkeley, Claremont McKenna. Others went to the various state universities or community college.
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