Why are Northern Kids Flocking to Southern Universities?

[Anonymous]

Duh....politics not in your face every day. Northern schools ruined.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The people shocked by the UGA application numbers reminded me of this article. It’s paywalled, but you can access it if you have Apple News.

To summarize, the kids interviewed say they are looking for a more “normal” college experience, whether as the result of less stringent Covid restrictions and/or less overt political activism (and, yes, the impact of new abortion laws is discussed). Auburn’s application numbers last year would indicate that the young woman interviewed who went to Auburn was not an isolated case.

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a41397404/southern-colleges-admissions-boom/

https://apple.news/A_qCsVporSlKxvlntKvvd3A


The process, Vincent says, was affecting her friends’ mental health, and she was vehemently turned off. So when her father, who went to college in the South, suggested she consider Auburn, a public university in eastern Alabama, she did. Within seconds of setting foot on Auburn’s lush, rolling campus—where stately brick buildings coexist with such world class amenities as a $72 million athletic facility with a huge, paw-shaped hot tub (Auburn’s mascot is a tiger)—she was smitten. “Out of all the campuses I toured it was easily the most beautiful. The number of people playing spike ball, throwing a frisbee, having picnics…” She also noted that back home it was much chillier. “Everyone just looked so happy” at Auburn. “I was like, This is where I need to go.”

Vincent, who enrolled the following year in Auburn’s Honors College, where she’s studying engineering, may sound like a quirky outlier: a New Yorker who decides to go rogue and attend a college in a deep red state that has a respectable 99 ranking among national universities on the sacrosanct U.S. News and World Report college list. But she is part of a growing trend among high school students in liberal hubs like New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago who are deciding to forgo the competitive, cutthroat environments of Colgate and Columbia for the more rah-rah vibe of places like Auburn, Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University, Clemson, the University of Miami, and other Southern institutions that have traditionally been written off by coastal snobs as football-and-frat-party schools that let anyone with a measurable GPA in their doors.

Some Southern universities—Tulane, Emory, and Vanderbilt, for example—have long attracted a steady stream of non-Southerners thanks to reputations as rigorous schools in cool places…..These schools are not thought of as Southern Southern; the biggest subset of Tulane’s class of 2026—30 percent—is from the Northeast.

What’s different now is that lower-tier Southern schools have started to enter this desirable group. Fifty-seven percent of the incoming freshman class at Texas Christian University, a midsize school in Fort Worth—where students walk around in cowboy boots on the mornings of school football games and down BBQ and queso at the Stockyards, a preserved Western district in town—are from out of state. Seventeen percent of those hail from California. Compare that to 2008, when more than 70 percent of TCU’s incoming freshmen were from Texas. Thirty miles down the road, at Southern Methodist University, a $79,000-a-year, Tara-like oasis in the middle of Dallas famous for boulevarding (high-class tailgating) and alums like Bumble co-founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, 62 percent of this year’s incoming freshmen are from out of state.

Southern schools are generally easier admits than their northern counterparts, OP.

[Anonymous]

I am not seeing this trend (NYC parent and not suburbs). Saw this chain and looked a t kids schools Instagram to confirm. There are a few acceptances from southern schools (Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane) but not many kids (6.3% of admits so far who posted) and all top schools. I am from the South and went to school in the South and seeing absolutely no trend to have kids look in South. If it is a trend I think it is just how hard it is to get into schools and people have expanded their lists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not seeing this trend (NYC parent and not suburbs). Saw this chain and looked a t kids schools Instagram to confirm. There are a few acceptances from southern schools (Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane) but not many kids (6.3% of admits so far who posted) and all top schools. I am from the South and went to school in the South and seeing absolutely no trend to have kids look in South. If it is a trend I think it is just how hard it is to get into schools and people have expanded their lists.

+1

[Anonymous]

Adding to above post there is one kid going to Duke but I forgot to count as a Souther school (not sure it counts)…. I do think the school my kid attends (nyc public) attracts serious students and they are not typically looking for party schools. I could see wealthy, white kids looking to the south because they may not get into schools that might have admitted them in the past, they want to have fun in college and perceive the south as more relaxed (whether true or not). And the HBCU always will attract some kids from NE

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not seeing this trend (NYC parent and not suburbs). Saw this chain and looked a t kids schools Instagram to confirm. There are a few acceptances from southern schools (Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane) but not many kids (6.3% of admits so far who posted) and all top schools. I am from the South and went to school in the South and seeing absolutely no trend to have kids look in South. If it is a trend I think it is just how hard it is to get into schools and people have expanded their lists.

I'm seeing a lot more apply to UF UGA Tennessee Clemson SC (in that order). Combo of weather, how hard it's all gotten, some improved academics and politics after Covid craziness up north and antisemitism at schools you wouldn't expect.

[Anonymous]

I agree those applying to top20 aren't flocking south. But those applying to UMD Ohio Michigan Wisconsin are adding southern schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not seeing this trend (NYC parent and not suburbs). Saw this chain and looked a t kids schools Instagram to confirm. There are a few acceptances from southern schools (Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane) but not many kids (6.3% of admits so far who posted) and all top schools. I am from the South and went to school in the South and seeing absolutely no trend to have kids look in South. If it is a trend I think it is just how hard it is to get into schools and people have expanded their lists.

I'm seeing a lot more apply to UF UGA Tennessee Clemson SC (in that order). Combo of weather, how hard it's all gotten, some improved academics and politics after Covid craziness up north and antisemitism at schools you wouldn't expect.

How did you create that order?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not seeing this trend (NYC parent and not suburbs). Saw this chain and looked a t kids schools Instagram to confirm. There are a few acceptances from southern schools (Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane) but not many kids (6.3% of admits so far who posted) and all top schools. I am from the South and went to school in the South and seeing absolutely no trend to have kids look in South. If it is a trend I think it is just how hard it is to get into schools and people have expanded their lists.

THIS. College freshman is currently on East Coast where he wanted to be, but during application time, rather than the South, he chose the Midwest. With kids regularly applying to a dozen or more schools, bound to expand your geography.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not seeing this trend (NYC parent and not suburbs). Saw this chain and looked a t kids schools Instagram to confirm. There are a few acceptances from southern schools (Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane) but not many kids (6.3% of admits so far who posted) and all top schools. I am from the South and went to school in the South and seeing absolutely no trend to have kids look in South. If it is a trend I think it is just how hard it is to get into schools and people have expanded their lists.

I'm seeing a lot more apply to UF UGA Tennessee Clemson SC (in that order). Combo of weather, how hard it's all gotten, some improved academics and politics after Covid craziness up north and antisemitism at schools you wouldn't expect.

How did you create that order?

Just seems a lot more applying to UF and UGA over others but depends on grades tests religion too

[Anonymous]

Those three schools are also mid-sized which is a hard type to find and preferred by alot of kids who don't want the tiny SLAC or the 40,000+ state school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those three schools are also mid-sized which is a hard type to find and preferred by alot of kids who don't want the tiny SLAC or the 40,000+ state school.

What 3 are mid sized?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not seeing this trend (NYC parent and not suburbs). Saw this chain and looked a t kids schools Instagram to confirm. There are a few acceptances from southern schools (Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane) but not many kids (6.3% of admits so far who posted) and all top schools. I am from the South and went to school in the South and seeing absolutely no trend to have kids look in South. If it is a trend I think it is just how hard it is to get into schools and people have expanded their lists.

I'm seeing a lot more apply to UF UGA Tennessee Clemson SC (in that order). Combo of weather, how hard it's all gotten, some improved academics and politics after Covid craziness up north and antisemitism at schools you wouldn't expect.

How did you create that order?

Just seems a lot more applying to UF and UGA over others but depends on grades tests religion too

Religion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not seeing this trend (NYC parent and not suburbs). Saw this chain and looked a t kids schools Instagram to confirm. There are a few acceptances from southern schools (Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane) but not many kids (6.3% of admits so far who posted) and all top schools. I am from the South and went to school in the South and seeing absolutely no trend to have kids look in South. If it is a trend I think it is just how hard it is to get into schools and people have expanded their lists.

I'm seeing a lot more apply to UF UGA Tennessee Clemson SC (in that order). Combo of weather, how hard it's all gotten, some improved academics and politics after Covid craziness up north and antisemitism at schools you wouldn't expect.

How did you create that order?

Just seems a lot more applying to UF and UGA over others but depends on grades tests religion too

Religion?

Yes. More Jews at UGA UF vs Clemson for example

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not seeing this trend (NYC parent and not suburbs). Saw this chain and looked a t kids schools Instagram to confirm. There are a few acceptances from southern schools (Vanderbilt, Emory and Tulane) but not many kids (6.3% of admits so far who posted) and all top schools. I am from the South and went to school in the South and seeing absolutely no trend to have kids look in South. If it is a trend I think it is just how hard it is to get into schools and people have expanded their lists.

I'm seeing a lot more apply to UF UGA Tennessee Clemson SC (in that order). Combo of weather, how hard it's all gotten, some improved academics and politics after Covid craziness up north and antisemitism at schools you wouldn't expect.

How did you create that order?

Just seems a lot more applying to UF and UGA over others but depends on grades tests religion too

Religion?

Yes. More Jews at UGA UF vs Clemson for example

Cite?