One of the tidbits of info that Chris Marshall shared with me in his interview last year was the location of Cornell alumni across the country. I, of course, neglected to include the data in the original interview, but recently stumbled across it again and thought it would be worthwhile to share with all of you. Now, this type of information might not be all that interesting to some of our readers, but as both a data and a geography geek, I find it pretty neat. I was also able to match up Chris's data with data from the U.S. Census to compare the relative concentration of Cornell alumni across different metro areas. The take away is that close to 1 in 4 Cornell alumni -- or over 35,000 people -- reside in the greater New York City area -- spanning from Northern New Jersey to Southwestern Connecticut. That's around 2.2 Cornellians for every resident of that area of the country. So while the megalopolis has a commanding share of alumni, it actually isn't all that over-represented relative to some other areas. Boston actually has more Cornell alumni per capita at 2.34 per 1,000 residents. And outside of Ithaca (where roughly 7.5 percent of the populace is a Cornellian) the highest concentration of Cornellians are living in the Upstate metros of Albany, Syracuse, and Rochester. The city that surprised me the most was Denver, with over 2,500 Cornellians. It must be the Coors connection -- places like Portland, Seattle, and San Diego can be explained by lifestyle and economy. The Midwest appears to be doing the worst. Chicago, the third largest metro in the country, only ranks 10th in terms of Cornellians, at 0.4 per thousand. Other large Midwestern cities, like Detroit and Cleveland, don't make the list, while others, like Minneapolis and Milwaukee are nowhere to be found. All said, 80 percent of Cornell's domestic alumni are in 31 cities (26 once you group the downstate environs). Data below the fold.
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