@keenspoon , Agree with much of what you said, but would pause on the following:
“In all honesty I do think Wesleyan has lost a little momentum,”
I think it’s regaining it. Super successful fundraising campaign, a clear and forward thinking President who is adding to the Wes experience but also managing the school in a fiscally sustainable manner. And the success of Hamilton has brought about all kinds of great public notice. Their sports teams are also no longer a joke. My D was in the women’s eight who captured the historic win at the Head of the Charles this fall. They also cleaned up the rest of the fall races and are the pre-spring favorites to win the NCAAs. Other sports teams have broken through. There’s the little issue of putting a bullet in the last of the frats - always a controversial thing - which caused drop in alumni giving which hurt them in the USNWR rankings. That will blow over. It did for Middlebury; it will for Wesleyan.
“but when you don’t control for a class size that is far smaller it is a invalid comparison”
They came in at 15.4%, and when you think about it, that’s impressive given that, unlike huge and big name schools, you don’t tend to get a lot of completely unqualified applicants to small LACs. A school like USC is going to have, I would think, a higher % of kids applying who aren’t even close to being qualified to be there, but they apply on a flyer “Because it’s SC!”. We can say that Amherst and Williams and Pomona have lower admit percentages, but then we’d need to compare USC to higher-ranking schools.
“USC has a stronger brand and name recognition - and sure it is MUCH stronger in Asia. It is on the West Coast, it is bigger and yes it has a great set of sports teams. People will know the school when you say it and it might have more value for finding a job in LA. That said it won’t be any stronger with graduate schools.”
They do for football, but I’m not sure the word is out there about its academics quite to the extent we might suppose. There are still A LOT of people who think football when they think of USC. It is, as you say, stronger on the West coast, but Wes does have a very solid reputation on the East coast.