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Large universities have large alumni associations with local chapters throughout the US. In states where custom plates are easy to get, those associates will of
by js2 3y ago
Large universities have large alumni associations with local chapters throughout the US. In states where custom plates are easy to get, those associates will often ensure their universities have their own plate designs.
It looks like the University of Florida has plates in at least six different states besides its home state: FL, VA, TX, GA, NC, MD, SC.
- madcaptenor 3y agoThat at least makes sense geographically!
- lapcat 3y agoWell, Maryland is clearly just out of control with the plates: https://www.beautifulpublicdata.com/content/images/size/w1600/2023/08/Artboard-1@2x-1.png https://www.beautifulpublicdata.com/content/images/size/w160... By the way, the majority of out-of-staters at UW are from neighboring Minnesota (with tuition reciprocity) and Illinois (the FIBs).
- madcaptenor 3y agoI've never heard of FIBs but I just Googled it and see that I correctly guessed what it means.
- lapcat 3y ago;-)
- Kon-Peki 3y agoOne of the top results in a web search (apparently FIP and FIB are interchangeable): > the Chicago Reader observed in a 1988 article titled “Invasion of the FIPs: boom time in southwestern Michigan.” “One local newspaper estimates that Chicago-area residents, all of them nonvoters, make up more than half the area’s taxpayers and pay more than 60 percent of its local tax load. Those inconsiderate jerks should stay home (or go somewhere else). The locals really want to experience the full cost of their town services. [1] https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/how-illinios-became-fips/ https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/how-illinios-became-fip...
- tzs 3y agoA quick Google search suggests that there are 760 000 living University of Indians alumni, 640 000 living University of Michigan alumni, around 500 000 living University of Wisconsin alumni, 450 000 living University of Florida alumni, 350 000 living University of Georgia alumni, and 170 000 living Georgia Tech alumni. I think that is all the schools people have mentioned so far. It does seem reasonable that most of those would have some states, besides the home state of the university, with enough of their alumni that a custom plate would be worthwhile. My school (Caltech) only has 24 000 living alumni so probably no custom plates for us in any state, even California. MIT has around 150 000, so maybe there is hope that at one nerd school gets a license plate somewhere. :-) I wonder what the smallest group of people is that gets a special plate in every US state? There are around 780 000 ham radio licensees in the US and every state offers ham radio plates, but I'm not sure that counts as a special plate because in many states a ham plate only differs from an ordinary plate in that the license number is your ham radio callsign. For example here in Washington normal plates are of the form ABC1234. A ham callsign in the US is N letters, a single digit, and M letters, which is called an NxM callsign. The possible NxMs are 1x2, 2x1, 2x2, 1x3, and 2x3. Someone looking at a ham plate would only know it is a ham plate if they recognized it was an NxM that matches one of the aforementioned NxMs. Anyone else would probably just think the state ran out of ABC1234 numbers and started a new format.
- madcaptenor 3y agoMIT is hard to search for because lots of states have a "ducks unlimited" plate, but Maryland (which we've already seen is plate-happy) has plates described as "Maryland - MIT Club of Washington". Re "nerd schools", there are five schools with "Technology" in the name that have plates in their own states: Rochester Institute of Technology (New York), Georgia Institute of Technology, Florida Institute of Technology, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Indiana Institute of Technology. (Before doing this search I'd only heard of the first two.)
- Kon-Peki 3y ago> I wonder what the smallest group of people is that gets a special plate in every US state? If I had to guess, it would be military in nature. Perhaps the Congressional Medal of Honor? Less than 4000 have ever been awarded. But I just checked 3 different states and only 2 of them offer a special plate for that. So you need something more common to have such a plate in every state.