The other difference, which parent didn’t mention, is the Ohio has plenty of water.

And it doesn't even catch on fire anymore!

https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire

> Ohio has plenty of water

California has 840 miles of coast line. Absolutely no shortage of water.

Desalination and PV technology keep improving, too.

Desalination is awesome, and I love to see it improve. No matter how good it is, it won’t be cheaper than water that is available in rivers and aquifers.

Idk what we consider the “Midwest to be” but here are some schools generally in the area that are good. Happy to delete any you don’t like. No particular order. ;)

1. Northwestern

2. Notre Dame

3. Wisconsin Madison

4. Ohio State

5. Minnesota Twin Cities

6. Carnegie Mellon

7. University of Chicago

8. Purdue

9. Penn St

10. Washington University St. Louis

11. UIUC

12. Case Western

13. Michigan

So there are plenty of world class educational institutions in the Midwest. Frankly I’d take this list over your list and that’s not including other brand name universities like Indiana, Pitt, Michigan State, Nebraska, or Iowa, some of which do “non-sexy” research in agricultural science and other fields. Ohio State has the only undergraduate wedding engineering program in North America even. It really is an absolute powerhouse of a region with far more national brand name recognition and reputation and monster enrollment numbers.

Cornell (ever heard of it?) is just as close to Columbus as UW-Madison is.

California has all that stuff because it’s literally further from SF to LA than it is from Columbus to DC.

> Cornell (ever heard of it?) is just as close to Columbus as UW-Madison is.

I was just going off of the “Midwest” versus distance.

> California has all that stuff because it’s literally further from SF to LA than it is from Columbus to DC.

Yea it’s a big state. I’d love to go off of distance though so we can include lots of other fantastic universities just to further drive home my point.

I know what one of those acronyms means.

If you substitute "University of California" for "UC", you'll be able to decipher a lot more of them if you know your California cities. For example, "UCSD" translates to "UC San Diego". "CP" gets you "California Polytechnical", but good luck sussing "SLO" unless you've been anywhere near San Luis Obispo.

> you'll be able to decipher a lot more of them if you know your California cities

Oh I know plenty of Californian cities, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Google.

I mean, if you are going to count campuses, Penn State has like 20+ alone.

It sounds like maybe you think UCLA and Berkeley are as closely related as the different campuses of Penn State, but that is far from the truth.

Caltech, Stanford, Cal, and Harvey Mudd are on the same tier with Purdue, Michigan, Illinois, CM.

The other ones are good schools, but in a distinctly second tier to that group.

You think UCLA, USC, and UCSD are second tier? Last I checked, UCSD is #9 for engineering in the nation, which is above UIUC at #10. USC is #12 and UCLA is #16 relative to Columbia at #15, John Hopkins at #17, Harvard at #21, Princeton at #22, and UW at #22.

What on earth do you mean by second tier?

That’s such an ignorant statement.

For example, when it comes to hardware & electrical engineering, UCSD alone is as productive as say Purdue & Illinois combined. And it’s a young university too.

And when it comes to materials science, Penn State will run circles around all of them.

Caltech, Standford, and Berkeley are well ahead of the Midwestern schools.

"Ahead" by what metric? Perceived prestige level by the layperson?

By professionals and by their peers. By what metric are the Midwestern schools on the same level?

Harvey Mudd is an undergraduate-only college. All the others are R1 institutions.

The two Cal Polys are not R1 institutions, they do not offer PhDs.

Stanford and Berkeley are amazing, Caltech is definitely tier 2, while Harvey Mudd is not even an R2 school

> I think all of them are nearly within 300 miles of LA too.

No, Davis, Berkeley, and Stanford are all 350+ miles from LA.

I will take Stanford and the UCs. Every other school in that list comes below the Midwestern powerhouses

You forgot Berkeley.

Cal == Berkeley