The states where students are most and least likely to leave home for college, ranked

As summer’s end nears, many young adults — and their soon-to-be-empty-nester parents — are starting to pack up suitcases and buy dorm furniture as they prepare to move away for college.

Whether they’re looking for specialized degree programs, school prestige, affordable tuition, broader networking opportunities, or a more distinctive campus experience, many students will soon be attending college across state lines from their parents.

Enrollment data from the US Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System measures the number of first-time degree- or certificate-seeking undergraduate students residing in each state and documents which institutions those students enroll in — and where those institutions are located relative to the student’s permanent address at the time of application.

The most recent release, documenting the fall of 2024, shows that of the over 2.93 million first-time students across all US states, 562,209, or 19.1%, enrolled at an out-of-state institution.

Business Insider also compared out-of-state enrollment rates across state lines and ranked all 50 US states by the share of resident first-time students who enrolled outside their state.

Using IPEDS data, we also calculated the most common destination state among residents who enrolled out of state.

While the data and our calculations can help show the broader picture of student migration in many states, they do not capture the factors that led each student to enroll out of state, nor do they explicitly reflect how many students are physically moving their primary residence, since IPEDS data also includes online programs that may be located in states other than the student’s residence.

See where your state ranked and where its out-of-state students most commonly enrolled.