re: To what extent would LSU be more prestigious if it were in a safer location?

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If she was out of state, LSU would have given her a sweet deal. That’s just how they are.

They don’t push too hard for the La students. They let TOPS do the work for them.

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This has been a trend at LSU for 20 years. No idea why.

Good (not great) students in my class would get free room and board, coverage for tuition and fees, etc. LSU didn't seem to care; instead focusing on incentives and scholarships for out of state students.

LSU's standards were slightly higher than those for TOPS, so every "in state" student at LSU qualifies for TOPS. That wasn't the case with ULL although that may have changed over the years.

LSU definitely still attracted the bulk of the brighter students out of my high school class, but the distance from La Tech probably had something to do with that too. ULL got a lot of the kids that couldn't quite get into LSU + a couple of very competitive students that got offered a very generous scholarship from ULL to supplement their TOPS (that's the student that LSU ignored).

Overall, I think Louisiana has too many universities for the population. I'm actually quite surprised that LSU's enrollment is approaching 40,000 students now. I suspect Tech and LSU are more aggressive in pulling students from out of state that might otherwise attend Arkansas, Texas A&M, University of Texas, Ole Miss, Alabama, Tennessee, etc to help sustain themselves, knowing that TOPS is doing the heavy lifting when it comes to attracting the "in state" students. ULL seems to be trying hard to pick away at least some of the competitive local students that might otherwise go to LSU or Tech.