[WkndTriathlete]

The north central schools (think Big 10 land-grant colleges), Georgia Tech, and Texas schools produce perfectly fine engineering and science grads. They mostly don't leave the locales they are in, because they all do this analysis:

"California: great weather all year, earn much less adjusted for CoL" "(e.g.) Minnesota: great weather for 8 months of the year (11 months if you ski or play ice hockey), earn much more adjusted for CoL"

So maybe you just haven't seen the talent in the rest of the country and assume it isn't there?

[JBlue42]

I've heard great things about Minneapolis, always with the caveat 'except for winter' but it seems you can still do winter stuff like people do in the rest of the world. Is the winter particularly bad or does it just seem that way if you're coming from a typically sunnier climate?