A story in the Friday, July 14 New York Times reported what many of us working in education had sensed for sometime but had not seen any data which verified our feelings. According to the article, "New York State has emerged as the top destination for freshmen leaving their home states to attend college." The article provided strong data to support that contention.

"In 1992, New York was about even with Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in attracting freshmen - about 21,000 - from out of state to degree-granting institutions. According to the most recent federal data, New York ranked first in 2004, with more than 36,000, ahead of Pennsylvania, California, Florida and Massachusetts. Between 1992 and 2004 New York registered the biggest increase in out-of-state freshmen of any state except Florida.

Furthermore, New York has gone from a state where more students left the state to attend college on balance to one which has more entering than leaving on balance. On a related note, earlier this spring, the Princeton Review designated New York University as the current "hot college" in the United States.

This change in perception of colleges and universities in New York on the part of both New York students as well as students from other states is most welcome and very significant. While some people cited the popularity of certain television programs as part of the reason for New York's popularity, many of us who work in education and consult with students and their parents through the college search process see something quite different.

Individually and collectively, New York's public and private colleges and universities have worked hard to strengthen and upgrade their facilities and attract high caliber students. Students who have worked hard from kindergarten through grade 12 to develop themselves academically, toiled endless hours to prepare themselves for SAT tests, SAT II tests, and AP exams, and sweated through the college application process, do not attend colleges because Seinfeld was set in a certain state. They go, instead, because they hear about where other top students are headed, what they read in college guidebooks and because certain colleges and universities have the academic programs they want.

New York has always had a number of nationally recognized private universities - Cornell, Columbia, Colgate, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic (RPI), etc. Their reputations have strengthened recently but so too have the public universities of the SUNY system as well as previously lesser-known private institutions. Hamilton College, for example, in upstate New York, is now ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the elite small liberal arts colleges, ahead of many more well-known names.

These changes are good for New York as well as for its students. In a world in which knowledge is critical to one's success in the world, strong institutions of higher learning are an absolute necessity.