Thursday, September 9, 2010

Back to school

In 1950, the Gallup Poll asked the following question:
"IF YOU HAD A SON OF COLLEGE AGE AND HE COULD ENTER ANY
COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY IN THE UNITED STATES AND YOU HAD
ENOUGH MONEY TO SEND HIM, TO WHICH ONE WOULD YOU MOST
WANT HIM TO GO?" (no, it didn't have a question about daughters).  About 8% said they didn't know, 4 percent gave the reasonable answer that it would be up to the hypothetical son, and a handful (less than 1%) said they wouldn't send him to college, leaving about 1300 who named a college.  The top choice was Harvard, but then things get more interesting.  Second place wasn't Yale, Princeton, Stanford, or one of the service academies, but Notre Dame.  Presumably a lot of Catholic parents wanted their son to go to a Catholic college, and Notre Dame was the best. 

The list of colleges picked by more than 10 people:

1.  Harvard       122
2.  Notre Dame    104
3.  Yale           78
4.  MIT            41
5.  West Point     40

6.  Michigan       34
7.  Columbia       31
8.  Berkeley       28
9.  Illinois       27
10. Chicago        25

11. Princeton      22
12. Cornell        22 
13. Minnesota      21 
14. Ohio State     21
15. Wisconsin      19

16. Stanford       17
17. Penn           16
18. Texas A & M    16
19. Purdue         14
20. Naval Academy  14

21. Northwestern   13
22. Dartmouth      13
23. NYU            13
24. USC            13
25. Penn State     12

26. UCLA           11
27. Kansas         11
28. Johns Hopkins  11
29. Michigan State 10

Some other patterns:  Midwesterners were loyal to their regional schools--the top 15 includes five Big Ten schools, plus the University of Chicago (and Notre Dame, although its appeal was probably to Catholics across the country).  Californians also were pretty loyal:  Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, and USC appear on the list.  Southerners were not:  the only college in the South on the list is Texas A & M.  Distinguished schools like North Carolina, Virginia, Duke, Texas, Vanderbilt don't appear on the list, and most of them weren't even close. Finally, the choices were scattered among a lot of schools--about 40 percent of parents chose one other than those listed (including 2 for UConn, which unforunately was not enough to make us #1 among public universities in New England).

Unfortunately, no one seems to have asked this question since 1950.  I'd guess that the concentration on the Ivy League and similar places would have increased.

2 comments:

  1. Both my uncles, from a good catholic family in 1950s Montana, were shipped off to Notre Dame. My aunt went to St. Mary's--right next to it.

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  2. I imagine the regional affiliation would be severely reduced in the present. Back in those days sending your son or daughter across the country might mean barely seeing them or talking to them for four years. Pretty different communication regime these days.

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