<p>2 things, and then I’ll go.</p>
<p>1) Harvard is easy. This distinction may vacillate between majors, and it’s true that its undergrad is easily one of the most talented, but rest assured - graduating with honors is the norm for a disproportionate part of the class compared to peer schools, and grade inflation has been documented. There was even an article about the cavalier studying habits of many students due to to these standards in the last Harvard alumni magazine. My dad is an alum, so we get it - it’s not like I read the periodicals of Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>2) The revealed preference study uses information so dated as to make it all but useless. A newer website - mychances . net - collects data in the same method AND maintains it with hundreds (reaching thousands) of contemporary students’ applications.</p>
<p>That site shows Brown losing to Columbia and Penn at 63-37, and tying with Dartmouth at 50-50.</p>
<p>Interestingly, and perhaps most telling of the data’s veracity, is the fact that the schools have non-linear relationships with each other. For example, even though Brown loses to Penn and ties with Dartmouth, Dartmouth beats Penn 60-40 and almost ties with Columbia, 57-43. Penn comes even closer, at 56-44.</p>
<p>Why is this telling or remotely interesting? Because it testifies to the truth of that strata of colleges we often invoke - first HYPSMC, then Col/Penn/Dart/Brown, then the rest. No one of those 4 is better than the other, and there’s no ladder of selectivity or prestige; some appeal to one kind of person, some to another, and that appeal ebbs and flows over the demographic that populates those schools.</p>
<p>A similar indicator, one of student quality, is average LSAT scores by college. Guess what? Columbia, Brown, Penn and Dartmouth are all 163. The only colleges higher than that are Stanford, Yale, Princeton and Harvard.</p>
<p>CONCLUSION - Brown isn’t leapfrogging anywhere. The data will show you what you want to see in hazy, invoked terminology like “preference,” etc, but when you get to the bottom of it, 1) student quality is definitely parable across the 4 middle ivies, and 2) consistently used preference tables reveal the schools to be essentially deadlocked, above most, and below the top 6.</p>
<p>TITCR^^^^</p>