Right now, millions of high school seniors are finalizing their college applications and anticipating where they’ll spend the next four years studying and sleeping on bunk beds. If the most hashtagged universities on TikTok are any indication, a lot of them will be headed below the Mason-Dixon line.

You’ve probably heard about #RushTok, the corner of TikTok where young women at mostly Southern schools post their way through sorority rush season. The University of Alabama’s sorority selection process, commonly known as Bama Rush, brought the phenomenon to the mainstream with an eponymous Netflix documentary and seemingly turned into a recruitment tool for the school itself. The draw of Southern campus life has spread well beyond the sorority set, however.

Northerners are flocking to big Southern campuses in large numbers. From 2014 to 2023, the number of undergraduate students from the Northeast rose 91 percent at schools belonging to the Southeastern Conference (SEC), according to a recent Sunday Times report. That includes Alabama as well as the University of Tennessee and Ole Miss, which have all seen the number of Northeastern students grow by more than 500 percent from 2002 to 2022. Meanwhile, their recruitment offices are making more of an effort to target these students, as these publicly funded schools become more dependent on out-of-state dollars.

The shift in enrollment lines up with a broader cultural shift over the past decade with the growing influence of Southern culture — everything from the popularity of country music to fashion to businesses moving to red states. So it’s not a huge surprise to see this trend in higher education. There are plenty of practical reasons why these schools have become more appealing, like lower tuition rates and warm weather. But it doesn’t fully explain why universities that have historically been famous for their sports teams and frat parties suddenly seem to have the aspirational sheen of the Ivy League.

“Young people are more aware that attending college will likely come with decades of student debt, so the mentality is trending towards one of fun, enjoyment, and community,” says Kaley Mullin, founder of cultural relevance........

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