I’ve been following the accounts of how some up & coming colleges (NEU, GWU, USC) are intensely focused on raising themselves up in the rankings. Besides simply elevating itself in USNWR, what other qualities does a school have to have, to “have arrived”?
The women should be seen with “hammers in their hands as they volunteered to build a shelter” and should be seen “fighting whitewater rapids on a river.”
^^ lol
Even though LA / USC is personally unappealing to me ( dislike the look and feel of the campus and neighborhood), I think of it as elite or near elite. I think it’s a whole 'nother tier above GWU and NEU. Frankly I wouldn’t have ever heard of NEU if it weren’t for CC.
When people stop saying that GW stands for Georgetown Waitlist, maybe it will have arrived.
How did Wash U do it? There was a time when it was obscure, but now it would be unthinkable to leave it off of a list of top colleges.
How about Olin as an engineering school?
Will we have a situation like this in the future (or it will never happen): Some school which has UG programs only is considered as more “prestigious” than a school which has both the UG programs and PhD programs?
A up and coming school has finally “arrived” when it gets sued by asian students for admissions discrimination.
@GMTplus7 good one - and pretty close to the truth!
I would add that perhaps a school can be considered elite when it can afford to waitlist or reject children of its alumni with impunity as happened in our case at Vanderbilt.
Even though Vanderbilt may now be considered “elite” based on its selectivity, it is still hard for me to see it as such since it wasn’t that long ago that its yield was 70%.
No matter how the school is rebranded/re marketed, I still don’t see it as an Ivy League equivalent.
It is a great university, but not worth the full sticker price. Of course, I suppose one could make the argument that paying full freight for a bachelors degree at any private “elite” university isn’t worth it if one looks at it strictly based on ROI - especially for non-Stem fields.
Isn’t this already true? Top liberal arts colleges such as Swarthmore and Oberlin are highly prestigious.
Post #7, the same can be said at a lot of schools, USC is one I can think of.
If it admitted anyone with a pulse when I was applying to college back in the 70’s I don’t consider it elite no matter it’s ranking now.
When they have an acceptance rate less than 20% or 30% maybe?
when they have a top 10 med school, which then trickles down to a top bio-sci program which attracts premeds. 
Thus, NEU has no chance, nor does GW. USC is still a wannabe. But it has been losing points in the law school rankings-race over the last few years bcos it chooses not to spend money to buy better students (aka stats). So they may have chosen to stop playing the game to move higher.
When it has the $$ and the foresight to offer to meet 100% of financial need for its students
@Nerdyparent do you mean Vandy’s yield used to be 70% or its admit rate used to be 70%? Big difference.
Elite status, whatever that is, doesn’t come from marketing. Three real issues leap up.
- NEU's students, for example, based on my looking at our high quality Boston area high school's application/admission data, score quite a bit lower on the SAT than students applying to/admitted to BC and BU, let alone Tufts, and it's a leap then to get to MIT and Harvard. This is not a knock. We don't have enough data for places like GW for me to comment on them.
- Research money. A few of the large colleges/small universities (like Wesleyan) receive minor amounts for research but the elite schools tend to receive a lot more. The line is hard to draw and it has foibles: such as BC, which is labeled a large "college" but is really a university, doesn't receive much research money but it's the premier Catholic institution in the most Catholic state and stands out in the region for that.
- Graduate school rankings. Again, not necessarily true when applied to colleges, but certainly correlates well. I can't think of an "elite" school whose graduate programs aren't highly ranked.
So for example, Wash U became an “elite” school because it has top-ranked graduate schools, admits students with high test scores and receives a ton of research money. Note that high test scores correlates well with admissions to top graduate schools. I would say that to be “elite” in the eyes of “elite” schools, you need to accept kids who then get into top graduate school programs. I would also add there is some component of hiring quality, not being hired - meaning you often see questions like “do investment banks interview at x?” - though that’s hard to measure and has a lot of regional location bias built in.
@GnocchiB admit rate. My apologies.
Adding to Lergnom’s comments, an “Elite” LAC is very different from an “Elite” Research University.
For the Research University, it’s driven by research funding (can’t do research without funding), and faculty (which drives research funding). I would say membership in the AAU (Association of American Universities)…but that’s really an output of research funding…
Blue bayou, USC medical school this year accepts no student off the wait list. My coworker’s daughter had sky high stats from UCLA told me. I think USC definitely on the rise.
I read something similar before: Some university wants to establish and maintain a top professional school (even though it may be a costly endeavor) because the overall prestige as a university could be enhanced.
On the other hand, I heard if a med school becomes a top one, it drains very little financial resources from the university. The top researchers hired by the top med schools are expected (and are often capable of) to get enough funding from other sources to support themselves (other than the expensive facility.)
When a UG program attracts too many premeds, the college may have to be busy in turning away the premeds because they do not want their college to turn into a “premed power house.”
When DS was applying to college, in an information session at a certain college in our state, we were told that if the student are into engineering, he could get some boost. (If it is “she”, more boost.) This statement was from their admission officer. They do not care if you want to be a premed because they have too many.)