Meaning of "Regional School" (the nicer term for "Tier 4)

[angiej]

The polite way to refer to a Tier 4 seems to be to call it a "Regional School." How nice. Anyway, what does this really mean? Regional as in "the Midwest" or "the immediate city the school resides" ?

[pjo]

The term "regional" isn't actually exclusive to the T4 schools; however, for the most part their region is smaller. To answer your question though, for a T4 school their "region" is only the city the school is in (and maybe a few small "cities" adjacent to it). Basically schools out of the top 20 or so are "regional", but with a bigger region. For instance, W&M, imho, is still a regional school. But instead of it having as its "region" just Williamsburg (which would be absurd) it has Richmond, Newport News and bascially all around the mid atlantic (i.e. VA/WV/NC/maybe a bit of SC). Schools in the T2 are similiar. Take for instance Temple in Philly. Its region is really Eastern PA and it gets weaker, but still expands across PA as a whole to Western PA (Pitt works in reverse). Regardless though, a regional school, no matter how broad of a region it covers, is going to be strongest and have the best job prospects in the city where the school resides.