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A 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 U
by tzs 3y ago
A 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.
- madcaptenor 3y agoHawaii has the fewest plates (14). Three are things that won't exist elsewhere in the US: Polynesian Voyaging Society, Haleakalā National Park, and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. There's the standard plate, of course. And there are ten kinds of veteran plates: Purple Heart, Pearl Harbor Survivor, Combat Veteran, Korea Veteran, World War II Veteran, (generic) Veteran, Persian Gulf Veteran, Gold Star Family, Vietnam Veteran - Motorcycle, Vietnam Veteran. So it has to be some sort of veteran, but searching for "Korea", "Gulf", "Vietnam" makes me think it's not veterans of any specific war.
- tzs 3y agoThey've got ham radio plates. Like most other states they look just like the standard plate except they have a ham radio callsign instead of something in the format of their normal sequence. So I guess it will come down to what is the smallest subset of veterans that gets a special plate in every state? Here in Washington there isn't actually a veterans plate. There are 6 military plates (army, marines, navy, air force, coast guard, and Washington national guard) and a gold star plate. You also get a decal to indicate status (veteran, retired, active duty, reserves, disabled veteran, army guard, air guard, army retired (for Army National Guard retirees), air retired (like army retired but for Air National Guard), fallen hero (for family members of someone killed in action), family, and gold star. I'd say a military plate plus the state issued decal that identifies you as a veteran would count as a veteran's plate. If it is just "veteran" that gets a plate in every state that would be something like 16 million people, which is more than ham radio license holders (under a million). It is starting to look like there might only be two groups that have plates in all states: veterans and ham radio license holders.
- singleshot_ 3y agoGovernors?