Last year the Wall Street Journal trumpeted the increasing numbers of students from the Northeast applying to schools in the South and on the West Coast. Estimates said that applicants from that area increased 30% from 2018-2022, and there is a growing trend to promote the lifestyle at these universities on social media.
Now schools in the South have seen a 91% increase in applicants from the Northeast, according to The Sunday Times. Larger state and regional schools have been seeing increased applications and enrollments in recent years; enrollments are up three to fives times as much at the University of Louisiana and the University of Tennessee. The University of South Carolina, prominently featured in this article, has enjoyed rapid growth for five straight cycles.
The influx of new applicants has forced these schools to become more selective, especially when it comes to out-of-state applicants. The University of North Carolina has put a hard cap on out-of-state applicants, and the University of California system has proposed to limit them to 10% by 2033.
The states seeing the most students leaving for college include New Jersey, Maryland, and Connecticut, based on data from 2022-23. However, there was still a large increase in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, so let's not overstate things—the Ivy League is doing just fine, and admission rates are still just as slim as ever. Rather than purely being geographical, it's more likely that changing attitudes, increased competition everywhere, and economic pressures are making people more open-minded about second-tier schools outside of the reputed "Top 20".
There are myriad reasons for the tectonic shift we're seeing. Tuitions and cost of living tends to be a bit easier in the South, and students enjoy the more welcoming and relaxed pace, better weather, more competitive sports teams, and active Greek life. Still other students cite antisemitism and overwhelmingly liberal politics for why they prefer to fly south for the semester.
Whatever your criteria, we've always maintained that the best policy is to look for your particular best fit school.