Published by The Hill
A new survey, drawing notice in academia, shows that 1 in 4 applicants decided against applying to a college this year solely because of the politics in its state.
The finding, long rumored in college admissions circles, has dire implications for some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions.
Tulane University in Louisiana, Stanford in California, Rice in Texas, Columbia in New York and the University of Miami all pride themselves on assembling a class from large pools of applicants drawn from every state. In the public sector, the University of Alabama counts on out-of-state admissions for revenue, enrolling nearly three-fifths of its students from outside its borders.
Yet, large numbers of conservative and liberal applicants ruled out those schools, along with their states, because of partisan politics.
“When you’re making a decision about a school, it’s really about choosing a community to live in,” said Chloe Chaffin, 20, a junior at Washburn University in Kansas. “Students want to feel that they belong to the city-community beyond the campus walls.”
Chaffin chose to attend college near her home in the Kansas City suburb of Olathe. She identifies as a liberal and works as an abortion-rights activist. One reason she didn’t leave Kansas was the landslide defeat last summer of a ballot measure that would have stripped abortion rights from the state constitution, part of a national upheaval in abortion law.
The new survey found that 31 percent of liberal applicants struck colleges from their lists for political reasons — especially abortion rights. The most-rejected states were Alabama, Texas, Louisiana and Florida.
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Likewise, 28 percent of conservative applicants ruled out states on political grounds — namely California and New York. Conservatives rejected states less for specific policies and more for fear of an overarching, oppressive liberalism, on campus and off.
“I completely understand why some people would choose to be with their own, as opposed to being in a sea of people who are politically opposed to them, on either side of the aisle,” said Nate Sirotovitch, 20, a junior at New York University who leads the College Republicans.
Sirotovitch lives in conservative-leaning Florida but chose a college in liberal New York, confident he would find friends across the political spectrum, which he did. To him, the survey illustrates the nation’s growing partisan divide.
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The survey comes from the Art & Science Group, a consulting and research firm that serves the higher-education sector. Surveyors interviewed 1,865 high-school seniors in January and February and balanced the results to reflect the college-bound population.
David Strauss, a principal at Art & Science, said he does not know of a prior survey that asked if college applicants rejected schools over local politics.
“It was always anecdotal before, as far as we can tell,” he said. “We started hearing last year from clients who would say, ‘I just got a phone call from a student who said she’s not coming back,’ or a phone call from a student saying, ‘I’m not coming back.’”
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But many elite campuses accept half or more of their students from out of state. And in the new survey, many applicants said they rejected colleges in their own states on political grounds.
The least popular state among college applicants, eschewed by 38 percent of those who rejected any state, was Alabama. Most abortions are banned in Alabama. The Cotton State has some of the nation’s least restrictive gun laws.
After Alabama, the most-avoided state was Texas. Most abortions in Texas are banned at six weeks of pregnancy. Texas also poses a challenge for students of any ideology who wish to vote. Texas is 1 of 6 states that do not accept student IDs for balloting purposes. Republican lawmakers in several states are working to narrow voting options for college students, who tend to vote Democratic.
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Louisiana and Florida ranked third and fourth among states most likely to be crossed from an applicant’s list.
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