I’ll add an even more specific version of this thought.
This somewhat famous study of IB “target” schools gave a very high rating to SMU in particular:
Particularly if you looked at the per capita rank–it was 15.
Now that is just IB, and very few people get into IB. Still, I think it reflects a fundamental truth about SMU, which is that it has long been a highly-connected college specifically for banking and other business placement in a good chunk of the country.
And just to dovetail a bit with my other post–many of the colleges ranked on this list between #1 (Penn (Wharton)) and SMU at #15 do not actually have undergrad business programs. So, not much point in talking about, say, Harvard (#2), if you want that sort of program. Georgetown, though, at #3, makes sense.
So actually–a quick leap from Georgetown to SMU with little if anything in between actually does make some sense, if in fact SMU is a “very likely” or indeed “safety”.
That said, I agree we could talk a little about schools like Texas or Indiana, which are more like Michigan in that they place well in gross terms but not quite as well in per capita terms. And I think a lot of that per capita result in the case of those colleges is self-selection, meaning I think if you focused on just the undergrad b-school students, they would look more similar per capita to SMU and such.
And to me, it would make sense for most people looking at Georgetown to also consider Notre Dame and Boston College.
But again, SMU is a really good choice itself. So if it is very likely? That’s great, and it might naturally lead to a short list.