Which schools outpace their location and vice versa?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:South Bend drags Notre Dame down.

Signed,
An ND Grad

+1

The way I see this thinking is that the fact that Notre Dame is such a desirable and loved school despite it's unfavorable location says something positive about the school in and of itself. Plop that campus in Boston, Chicago, or DC, and I wonder what that would do to its acceptance rate. I imagine it would get many more applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:South Bend drags Notre Dame down.

Signed,
An ND Grad

+1

The way I see this thinking is that the fact that Notre Dame is such a desirable and loved school despite it's unfavorable location says something positive about the school in and of itself. Plop that campus in Boston, Chicago, or DC, and I wonder what that would do to its acceptance rate. I imagine it would get many more applications.

Does it want more applications, though? I feel like Notre Dame fills a niche and has a very loyal "base" of students who really, really want to go there and buy into the culture. I don't think it necessarily wants to be generic Selective School that every smart kid applies to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boston pulls up Tufts and Williamsburg drags down W&M

What's bad about Williamsburg? Too touristy?

I lived there for a couple of years and really liked it. Beautiful area.

[Anonymous]

The area around Penn used to be the pits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:South Bend drags Notre Dame down.

Signed,
An ND Grad

I dunno. Part of what appealed to my DC about ND was South Bend. Ok, not SB itself but he likes being at a school where - because there's not lots to do in the general vicinity - life really does revolve around campus activities, dorm life, etc. I don't think you would get that sense of togetherness, intense school spirit, and vibrant on-campus life (and some say cult like devotion LOL) that ND is known for if it were in a "cool" city like DC or Boston (the fact that Notre Dame's per student endowment is about 5x that of BC's and 11x Georgetown's is a good example of this).

Actually that would apply to many of the schools in down cities!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:South Bend drags Notre Dame down.

Signed,
An ND Grad

+2 Seven years in South Bend stunted my growth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And yet, some of these more remote areas help the campuses have a distinct feel (compared to urban campuses) and the lower cost-of-living helps their finances.

Yet Notre Dame likes to pretend it is on the same financial level as Georgetown or Boston College (MUCH more expensive cities) and charge equally exorbitant tuition when, yes, of course, cost of living in South Bend is MUCH, much less. Blegh. Get over yourself, ND. (And I'm from a big, multigenerational, ND family.)

Get back to work, Filch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And yet, some of these more remote areas help the campuses have a distinct feel (compared to urban campuses) and the lower cost-of-living helps their finances.

Yet Notre Dame likes to pretend it is on the same financial level as Georgetown or Boston College (MUCH more expensive cities) and charge equally exorbitant tuition when, yes, of course, cost of living in South Bend is MUCH, much less. Blegh. Get over yourself, ND. (And I'm from a big, multigenerational, ND family.)

Why would the cost of education at a private school be lower in a low COL area aside from housing? You still have the same costs for attracting high caliber faculty (sometimes the only way to draw faculty to live in South Bend is being paid on par or better as faculty in higher COL areas plus other perks), pay for the same services and infrastructure, pay for the same administrative costs, etc.

Oh, please, do you really think admin help or entry level workers or grounds people are paid the same as in DC? No.

why would they be?

Is that the bulk of the cost of educating people though? I would think the salaries for facilities, class room resources, IT infrastructure, library infrastructure, student health, salaries for tenured faculty as well as administrators (not admin help, like the provost, etc.), etc. all ads up to more than the grounds people and so on. Also, just glancing at graduate stipends, they tend to be closer to schools in higher COL areas/other private schools than public schools in similar COL areas. Notre Dame has also bought a significant amount of land in South Bend to build various facilities, infrastructure, dorms, and athletic related areas that a school in a city would not have the opportunity to purchase due to real estate costs. This is just to say I think that the cost of a private education is a lot more complex than the cost of the entry level workers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Biases aside, I'm learning a lot on this thread. How about Chicago, Northwestern, Emory, Rochester? Locations a plus or minus?

Northwestern is close to Chicago but in suburban Evanston and has a very cohesive campus. The El doesn’t even go to Evanston-you must bus to the nearest stop. It is close enough to the city for internships and fun, but not of the city.

Umm, yes it does. I know this because my daughter takes it to her internship every day. It is the purple line, and the Noyes stop is an 8 minute walk from her dorm.

Ones person's 8-minute walk is another's bus ride?

There are literally 7 El stops within the city of Evanston on the purple line.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:South Bend drags Notre Dame down.

Signed,
An ND Grad

Notre Dame (and Saint Mary's) were charted in 1844, more than 20 years before South Bend was incorporated as a city in 1865. Most East Coast universities were established after the city existed. So, some schools are created because of the city, while in other places, the relationship is different. Notre Dame is the second largest employer in South Bend (the County is the largest).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of all the flagship public colleges in the midwest it think its not accident that Ann Arbor (MI) and Madison (WI) have the best location with the rep of a cool midwestern city vibe and enough going on to make it desirable.

Don't get me wrong, I loved going to U of M, but outside of the immediate campus area through Main Street, it's all houses and apartment buildings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:South Bend drags Notre Dame down.

Signed,
An ND Grad

+2 Seven years in South Bend stunted my growth.

South Bend has never recovered from Studebaker leaving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Probably not Penn, but Philadelphia drags down Drexel and Temple due to their location. Baltimore certainly drags down Johns Hopkins.

Conversely, Boston props up Boston University and Northeastern, while New York props up NYU and Fordham, but not necessarily Columbia.

There are a lot of mid-sized schools in depressing towns in New York and Pennsylvania that would have higher profiles if they were in nicer areas either in New England or the South. Hobart/William Smith, Bucknell, and Washington & Jefferson come to mind.

Have you been to Fordham? It’s in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of the Bronx. It’s far from the NYC glam that applicants expect. I have friends who live in other areas of the Bronx and try to avoid the area.

I wouldn't say the Fordham area is one of the most dangerous parts of the Bronx, but in any event the NYC location gives Fordham a boost among students from other areas it probably wouldn't otherwise enjoy. Plenty of kids want to go to school in NYC, and Columbia is super-competitive and NYU super-expensive.

When people say they want to go to NYC, they really mean the heart of Manhattan like NYU.
Columbia is right next to Harlem making it's location is more of disadvantage than an advantage.

Harlem is being gentrified. Have you seen real estate prices near Columbia? NYU is propped up by Manhattan and all the stars who have gone there, but the fact is that the networking and internship opportunities the school offers are phenomenal.