Schools I would totally avoid now given the blatant anti-semitic nonsense at
Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Brown, Penn, Princeton, Dartmouth, Northwestern, UT Austin, UCLA, MIT, Emory, USC. Wow!!
I'm sure more colleges will join this list soon.

Given the presence of ED and SCEA, cross-admit data and yield is meaningless here. There is really no efficient market of free choices here as the ranking seems to imply. The sample size of true cross admit data between any two colleges is miniscule and barely moves the pointer on yield at these colleges. A large pool of the students with the most power to make independent decisions is removed from the pool with ED and practically with SCEA, because very few students get admitted to more than one SCEA School given the abysmal RD admit rate at these schools. Students that are left in the RD pool are essentially financial aid shoppers and their decision to pick one School over another is hardly "market efficient". It's heavily "market distorted" by aid dollars.

For e.g.a Penn vs Duke or Vanderbilt will only be based on an RD pool where Vanderbilt can win every cross admit bake off with enough merit or need based aid dollars. This says nothing about the true market position of either Penn or Vanderbilt.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This tracks with our experience getting to know actual Vanderbilt students (DC is enrolled now) -- the student really, really do want to be there. They are not sad that they're not at USC, or Brown, or Chicago. Vanderbilt was their target all along ... regardless of where it falls on this year's USNWR list.

They know it ranks lower than Brown, and the current students we know don't seem to care because they're completely different products. That's why they (and so many other enrolled students) do ED, even before test optional came onto the scene.

I would guess the situation is the same at some of the other very distinctive schools, like Dartmouth and Columbia.

vs., I could personally see the same individual being agnostic between, say, Duke and Northwestern.

Similar case with Brown I think

The middle part of the list seems to echo that. There are some schools that people are really passionate about - Michigan, Notre Dame, USC, Vanderbilt, and Dartmouth. It's not often you see Notre Dame and USC ranked higher than Duke and Johns Hopkins, but here we are.

I think it's less so with Dartmouth and Michigan (amazing value if you're in-state with scholarships), but more with Notre Dame (Catholic), USC (film, LA vibe) and Vanderbilt (top school in a very collaborative, friendly environment)

Outcomes might be different now that anti-Semitism has become a popular intramural sport at all of these universities except some of the Catholic ones.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This tracks with our experience getting to know actual Vanderbilt students (DC is enrolled now) -- the student really, really do want to be there. They are not sad that they're not at USC, or Brown, or Chicago. Vanderbilt was their target all along ... regardless of where it falls on this year's USNWR list.

They know it ranks lower than Brown, and the current students we know don't seem to care because they're completely different products. That's why they (and so many other enrolled students) do ED, even before test optional came onto the scene.

I would guess the situation is the same at some of the other very distinctive schools, like Dartmouth and Columbia.

vs., I could personally see the same individual being agnostic between, say, Duke and Northwestern.

Similar case with Brown I think

The middle part of the list seems to echo that. There are some schools that people are really passionate about - Michigan, Notre Dame, USC, Vanderbilt, and Dartmouth. It's not often you see Notre Dame and USC ranked higher than Duke and Johns Hopkins, but here we are.

What is the list?

If you ho yo the website, they want your info to view the list

Anonymous wrote:This tracks with our experience getting to know actual Vanderbilt students (DC is enrolled now) -- the student really, really do want to be there. They are not sad that they're not at USC, or Brown, or Chicago. Vanderbilt was their target all along ... regardless of where it falls on this year's USNWR list.

They know it ranks lower than Brown, and the current students we know don't seem to care because they're completely different products. That's why they (and so many other enrolled students) do ED, even before test optional came onto the scene.

I would guess the situation is the same at some of the other very distinctive schools, like Dartmouth and Columbia.

vs., I could personally see the same individual being agnostic between, say, Duke and Northwestern.

Similar case with Brown I think

Anonymous wrote:Odd that the post above left out the last 5 ranked schools as 2 of the final 5 are in the DMV.

21) Texas
22) Rice
23) Virginia
24) WashUStL
25) Georgetown

Pretty consistent with US News ranking. UVA in state is such a great value

Odd that the post above left out the last 5 ranked schools as 2 of the final 5 are in the DMV.

21) Texas
22) Rice
23) Virginia
24) WashUStL
25) Georgetown

Kid's school is in the top 10--so its a good ranking !

Finally! A ranking that makes sense!

Top 20

RANK UNIVERSITY LOCATION
1 Stanford University Stanford, CA
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA
3 Harvard University Cambridge, MA
4 Princeton University Princeton, NJ
5 Yale University New Haven, CT
6 Columbia University New York City, NY
7 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA
8 Brown University Providence, RI
9 Northwestern University Evanston, IL
10 University of Chicago Chicago, IL
11 University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA
12 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
13 University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN
14 University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA
15 Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN
16 Dartmouth College Hanover, NH
17 Duke University Durham, NC
18 University of California, Los Angeles CA
19 John Hopkins University Baltimore, MD
20 Cornell University Ithaca, NY

This tracks with our experience getting to know actual Vanderbilt students (DC is enrolled now) -- the student really, really do want to be there. They are not sad that they're not at USC, or Brown, or Chicago. Vanderbilt was their target all along ... regardless of where it falls on this year's USNWR list.

They know it ranks lower than Brown, and the current students we know don't seem to care because they're completely different products. That's why they (and so many other enrolled students) do ED, even before test optional came onto the scene.

I would guess the situation is the same at some of the other very distinctive schools, like Dartmouth and Columbia.

vs., I could personally see the same individual being agnostic between, say, Duke and Northwestern.

Sorry -

UCLA 64 - Berkeley 36

Anonymous wrote:USC goes up from 28 USNews to 14 here and above UCLA which validates my thinking. It’s a school a lot of kids want to go to.

I’ve seen elsewhere that the actual cross-admit data between UCLA and USC and UCLA and Berkeley paints a completely different picture that what’s seen in these rankings.

UCLA 64 - Berkeley 46

UCLA 57 - USC 43