Study: Best students travel farther for college
(MoneyWatch) The highest achieving teenagers are more likely to attend college farther away from home, according to a new study by standardized testing giant ACT.
The greater a teenager's academic achievements, the likelier he or she is to put more distance between home and college. According to the ACT's research, 2012 high school graduates who took the ACT college readiness exam attended college a median distance of just 51 miles from their home.
Students with a score of 33 or higher (scores on the test ranges from 1 to a high of 36), the median distance was 170 miles.In contrast, students with the lowest ACT scores, at 24 or lower , traveled less than 50 miles to attend college. Students with an ACT composite score range of 28 to 36, the median distance from home to college was more than 113 miles.
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Students of all socioeconomic backgrounds favor sticking closer to home. The 2012 UCLA study of college freshmen from across the nation concluded that only 14 percent of freshmen attended a school more than 500 miles away.
One takeaway of the ACT study: Students may be limiting
their college choices.
"Students may be selecting a small choice set and sticking to that set without exploring all of the options available to them," said Steve Kappler, ACT's head of postsecondary strategy, in a statement. "We must help students understand that the colleges that best fit their needs and interests may be ones they have never even heard of."
Keeping a teenager closer to home doesn't necessarily reduce a family's college costs. Applying to schools in different time zones can boost a student's chances for merit scholarships and better aid packages because colleges crave geographic diversity.
Meanwhile, in the age of Skype, instant messaging,
texting and email, parents can stay in close touch with their children
regardless of where they attend college. (When my daughter was studying
for an entire school year at the University of Barcelona, I talked to her
just as frequently, via Skype, as I did when she was at Juniata College in
Pennsylvania. My daughter's college was 2,500 miles from our house in San Diego. My son's school, Beloit College, is more than 2,000 miles away.
A lot of parents get hung up with the cost of airfare to and from faraway colleges. I have found the plane tickets actually cost me less than the cost of keeping my children on our car insurance policy. Parents don't realize that they can often take their children off their car insurance coverage when they are attending distant colleges, which can be a huge cost. And bigger scholarships from the schools can negate the cost of travel.
