Attending College Close to Home
When it comes to checking out colleges, I’m a big believer in casting a wide net. Look at big, small, public and private institutions. And check out schools that aren’t in your time zone.
As I mentioned in a post that I wrote last week, most families just don’t do this. The vast majority of students never look beyond the public universities in their own state and most don’t wander more than 150 miles from home. There are only a few states, which are primarily clustered in the Northeast, where this isn’t true.
I thought I’d share with you just how many kids stay close to home. Below you’ll find statistics published by The Chronicle of Higher Education that pinpoint the percentage of college students in certain states who enroll in their own state institutions.
Region Students Attending Own State Schools
Northeast
- Massachusetts 43%
- Pennsylvania 55%
- New York 55%
- Vermont 59%
- Connecticut 64%
- New Jersey 80%
Midwest
- Missouri 58%
- Iowa 63%
- Minnesota 65%
- Illinois 67%
- Ohio 73%
- Wisconsin 80%
- Michigan 81%
South
- Tennessee 71%
- Florida 74%
- Virginia 78%
- North Carolina 82%
- Louisiana 86%
- Mississippi 90%
Southwest
- Arizona 58%
- Texas 87%
- New Mexico 92%
West
- Colorado 75%
- Oregon 81%
- California 84%
- Washington 85%
- Nevada 91%
As a practical matter, exploring more alternatives can be a lifesaver if the public universities in your state are cutting back enrollment due to shrinking budgets. My nephew, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, now worries that the California state universities that he thought he could get into next fall may end up rejecting him because of the state’s financial turmoil. He and his parents are now scrambling to find back-up choices.
Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution.
It’s definitely something that I wish I had done – left the state for college. In retrospect, there are many colleges that offer a middle ground between a “city school” and a “rural school.” If I had known about the existence of quaint college towns when applying, my choices would have been more varied. I wonder if those statistics reveal the level of comfort students feel regarding leaving home or lack of information regarding what the options are.