How many elite/top schools are there?

[Anonymous]

I would hazard a guess of it being in the loser 1200s.

The *lower* 1200s, I mean.

[Anonymous]

Way too many acronyms. Some of these adults need to live past collegiate days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Way too many acronyms. Some of these adults need to live past collegiate days.

Ah, yes, my collegiate days [looks wistfully into the distance] . . . when we'd happily gather around the keg to trade acronyms. That, of course, was before we all died and became forum-haunting ghosts who failed to "live past [our] collegiate days."

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure the previous poster meant WASP, not SWAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having a discussion with my mother and DH. He says 50, Mother says 65, I say about 30. What do yall think?

One. Harvard... because my kid goes there.

[Anonymous]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/16tenex/revealed_employer_preferences_in_t50ish_colleges/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m gonna say there’s 21.

HYPSM are the Mount Olympus of US colleges.

Other Universities I’d call elite are the other Ivies, Cal Tech, Northwestern, Hopkins, UChicago, Duke. Then I’d thrown in SWAT (maybe controversially?), West Point, and Annapolis and call it a day. There’s some on the fringe like Vandy, Notre Dame, Cal, etc., but I think those 21 are a notch above in terms of reputation and history.

What is SWAT

Whoops, meant WASP. I choose to blame autocorrect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:13

what is your 13?
mine would be ivies and Stanford MIT Duke Caltech Uchicago

So Cornell, Dartmouth, and Brown are more elite than Northwestern, Johna Hopkins?

DP. Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, Northwestern, and Johna Hopkins are similar imo.

Your opinion is delusional. Johns Hopkins has a 4.7 reputation score on USnews. Dartmouth has a 4.3, tied with Vanderbilt.

Why isn't Dartmouth considered anSLAC? Isn’t it the same size?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m gonna say there’s 21.

HYPSM are the Mount Olympus of US colleges.

Other Universities I’d call elite are the other Ivies, Cal Tech, Northwestern, Hopkins, UChicago, Duke. Then I’d thrown in SWAT (maybe controversially?), West Point, and Annapolis and call it a day. There’s some on the fringe like Vandy, Notre Dame, Cal, etc., but I think those 21 are a notch above in terms of reputation and history.

What is SWAT

Whoops, meant WASP. I choose to blame autocorrect.

Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona.

It's a silly and outdated acronym for the SLAC (Small Liberal Arts College) crowd. We all know West Point, Annapolis, Bowdoin, and St. Johns (Annapolis/Santa Fe) are the best SLACs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what the issue is. The flagship schools in the big states - like California, Texas, and Michigan - tend to vacuum most of the great in-state students. And a 1350 from a shit school in Flint or Waco or Salinas is much more valuable than a 1550 from GDS or Sidwell or choose your privileged school. That 1350 from a difficult school shows resilience and talent and discipline. Texas, Berkeley, UNC - to their credit - are all focused on in-state students. Michigan will take more OOS students, but it remains primarily focused on in-state.

For the OOS students, you need to be a little extra special, but most importantly you need to be willing to pay twice as much as every other student at these schools.

And these realities are distorting when compared to the high endowment private schools. Harvard and Texas-Austin have different priorities.

No! it doesn't! It shows test taking ability (and a 1350 is a lousy score from a private high school) The BOTTOM 25th percentile at UVA has a 1410! Test scores are not indicative of resilence or discipline! GPA, course rigor and class rank are more determinative of that. Please don't comment if you have no idea what you are talking about!

From their School Profile, Georgetown Day School's SAT range in 2019-2020, back when just about everyone was taking it, looked like this:

Subject, middle 50%, mean
Reading and Writing, 665-740, 696
Math, 635-760, 691

So 1350 is in the middle 50% for an elite school, which suggests that it is, in fact, a quite good score by the standards of private schools.

UVA is trying to pull a fast one on you. 1410 marks the 25th percentile of *submitted* scores. About 40% of students don't submit any test scores. The true 25th score is much lower, I would hazard a guess of it being in the loser 1200s.

For what it's worth, statistical data suggests that high academic test scores correlate with everything nice. So you have some screw-ups that scored 1600 on the SATs, but fewer, proportionately, than 1500, and the 1500s have fewer screw-ups, proportionately, than the 1400s, and so on.

Wow this is news to me, UVA accepts students with 1300/low 1400 SAT scores?

[Anonymous]

Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT.
5.
These are the only 5 that I deem elite.
There are others very prestigious but not “quite” elite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT.
5.
These are the only 5 that I deem elite.
There are others very prestigious but not “quite” elite.

Yale least impressive of the bunch. Would rather see Caltech in there, heck even an argument for Penn or Duke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:13

what is your 13?
mine would be ivies and Stanford MIT Duke Caltech Uchicago

So Cornell, Dartmouth, and Brown are more elite than Northwestern, Johna Hopkins?

DP. Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, Northwestern, and Johna Hopkins are similar imo.

Your opinion is delusional. Johns Hopkins has a 4.7 reputation score on USnews. Dartmouth has a 4.3, tied with Vanderbilt.

Why isn't Dartmouth considered anSLAC? Isn’t it the same size?

Because it is an R1 research university, with graduate schools, and not a liberal arts college.