An unprecedented number of students are gravitating away from Ivy League universities and looking to Southern colleges that wouldn’t have been on their radar twenty years ago. The exodus is fueled, sources told me, by warmer weather, great college sports, and a more relaxed atmosphere, which stands in stark contrast to the Covid restrictions many Northern universities put in place from 2020–2023. (Elite colleges in the North often had the strictest Covid policies—from requiring students to wear masks at all times to limiting gatherings, inside and out, to five people—while Southern universities from Florida to Alabama to South Carolina allowed students to congregate in large groups, neither masked nor socially distanced.)

But another factor driving kids away from elite schools is their dominant progressive politics, which many feel deepen cultural divides rather than promoting healthy debate. The old-school vision of colleges serving as an open forum for ideas has been replaced with an us-versus-them mentality, where there’s only one “right” answer to any thorny issue and the winner is the one who shouts the loudest.

Both Brown and Harvard saw dips in their application numbers this year—by 5 percent and 3 percent, respectively. (Early decisions to Harvard were down 17 percent.) And while applications to private colleges in mid-Atlantic (25.3 percent) and New England (29 percent) states have risen since 2019, the gains have been small compared to Southern colleges, which saw a 42 percent increase overall. The surge is even more pronounced at state schools. Public colleges in the South saw a total 62.4 increase in applicants, more than double their Northern counterparts, according to Common App data from earlier this month.