<p>IBClass - the question isn’t whether Dart is a great school or not - it certainly is, but of late, urban research univs are certainly gaining traction in the college marketplace.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, for most of the 20th century, after HYPS, Dartmouth was a PRIME destination for top talent. Penn, Columbia, Chicago, etc. had somewhat poor reputations and were not seen as good targets for the most promising (read: mainly WASP and connected) high school talent. (Moreover, Brown was seen as a bit of a backwater school.)</p>
<p>Nowadays, that’s changing quite a bit because Penn et al. are surging a bit, and Dartmouth, while doing a good job of maintaining its status, does not enjoy as much separation from its urban research univ peers.</p>
<p>A big part of the attraction of a research univ is it has the potential of bringing in money - big time gov’t spending (look at Penn, Stanford, etc.), and that’s alluring to any institution. More or less, research univs seem to be on the upswing, where if you look at the state of LACs (and read articles on it), its a much more unstable world for them.</p>