<p>More than anything, I think that the Rhodes scholar metric illustrates that until quite recently, there truly were only 3 “elites” that sent students to Oxford in reliable numbers. After HYP, the gap to Stanford and MIT is over 100 Rhodes scholars, yet those schools are still considered on par academically and selectively.</p>
<p>The fact that Penn, Brown and Columbia have only sent between 19 and 22 students probably has more to do with institutional bias than anything else. Witness the US military academies, which have together sent more than Stanford - it is well-known that the American Rhodes scholarship committee favors servicemen. UChicago has long been known as a bastion of scholarship, so its showing (more than each of the non-HYP Ivies and MIT) is unsurprising. </p>
<p>A better metric would be the more-recently endowed (and thus less “old elite” prejudiced) Gates Foundation Scholarship, which has proven far more equitable between the middle Ivies and HYP. This year, in fact, Penn won 3, more than YP and only 1 fewer than H (and none were Wharton students).</p>