College road trip

Posted by Marc Hodak on March 19, 2008 under Revealed preference | Comments are off for this article

On our way back from dropping our big guy off at college, we looked at schools with our little guy. (We call him the “little guy” although he’s now the biggest member of the family.) We looked at a cross section of schools–big, small, public, private, urban, rural, etc. His verdict was in favor of bigger, small-town campuses. UVA scored well on these criteria.

We also figured out on this trip that New York kids apply in out-sized numbers to schools in the mid-Atlantic. Why? The obvious answer is that there’s lots of us. The more complete answer, especially when faced with paying private school rates for public schools (a.k.a., out-of-state tuition), is that many state schools (UVA, UNC, Maryland, etc.) are pretty good. SUNY, on the other hand, is among the worst systems in the country. New York state should be ashamed of itself, but then I know what New York politics is like, and shame is not part of the equation.

We also got some more insight into how the average kid chooses a college, even though this is our second student. One has in-school and on-line resources to help determine the appropriate criteria for choosing. One has publicly available judgments of various institutions along the dimensions of those criteria. And stuff. In the end, it seems to come down to reputation and physical attractiveness. And, of course, by that little thing we know of as admissions. And maybe who gives you money to offset those outrageous tuitions. (College or a new house?)