This group makes absolutely zero sense. The “Ivies” themselves are a fairly heterogeneous group, but at least they are all research universities. This group has three LACs, four large public universities, one of them with strong tech leaning, one HBCU, and a few private universities that are extremely different from one another.
Even acceptance rates vary between 50% for Wisconsin and 13% for NYU. That is without adding the fact that Virginia, GTech, and Michigan have large differences in acceptance rates between in-state and OOS applicants.
I cannot even begin to guess why these, since nothing actually makes sense.
Maybe the author asked their friends and family which college they would choose instead of an Ivy League college, and these were the ones that recieved the most votes.