<p>Gellino, first off, I think your assumption that Middlebury is a backup to Dartmouth is off base. PR considers it more difficult to gain admission to Midd than to Dartmouth (albeit, only slightly). Dartmouth may get more applicants and may be better known, but Middlebury’s applicant pool is largely self-selecting so there are fewer students who apply on a whim, thus competition among applicants is higher. </p>
<p>I’m not familiar with the Feb admission program at Colgate (which, btw, I think is a great school), but at Midd they ask students whether they’d like to be part of the Feb program. There is no qualitative difference between Feb and Regular admits. In fact, Febs are often class leaders because they tend to be more outgoing. I’m not sure where it is, but I know there’s a thread on Febs at Midd and it explains a lot of this. Because Midd’s international study program is so large, there are a ton of Febs, having any qualitative difference between the two types of admits would completely disrupt the program.</p>
<p>Lastly, the idea that there are possibly 32 academic institutions in the US that are better than Middlebury is absolutely absurd. I struggled to list generously 32 possible schools, but simply couldn’t do it. That may explain why no one has heard of the Brody Ranking.</p>