Dive Brief:
- Data collected from nearly 350,000 high school students seeking information on colleges from Niche.com shows that 58% choose colleges within 100 miles of home and 72% stay in-state.
- High-achieving students, as judged by having an SAT score of 2100 or better, are more likely to travel more than 500 miles to college and to leave their home state.
- Reed College in Portland, OR, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and Stanford University are the top three farthest-from-home colleges, with students traveling an average of 1,357 miles to get to Reed.
Dive Insight:
Another point of interest from the analysis: New England and Mid-Atlantic states had the greatest percentage of college-bound high school seniors leaving their home state for college. Vermont was No. 1, at 64%, followed by New Hampshire at 58% and Connecticut at 52%.