Jeff Selingo on fading prestige

[ucbalumnus]

Includes this sentence:

@Jeffrey Selingo

Meanwhile, schools that were considered regional brands three decades ago, such as the University of Southern California and New York University, have risen in the rankings and now have acceptance rates that rival those of the Ivy League.

In the 1980s, New York City was considered synonymous with crime (remember the movie Escape from New York?). So no surprise that NYU likely had trouble marketing itself back then. But after the crime wave (that peaked in 1991) receded, and New York City crime fell faster than overall crime in the US, the location became an advantage for NYU.

USC in the 1980s had a strong “University of Spoiled Children” reputation, but (beginning in the 1990s?) aggressively tried to raise its academic profile (with what were then automatic full tuition scholarships for National Merit Finalists, among other scholarships). Obviously, it has been successful at that. It also benefited from the receding of the crime wave, since it is in a relatively higher crime part of Los Angeles.