<p>^ “not to mention the rest of the college glitterati”</p>
<p>I think “university glitterati” would be more accurate. </p>
<p>We’re talking about a narrow subset of undergrads, those who go into academia and/or research. Stanford, e.g., is two-thirds grad school, the main source of its world-class glitter, and is where many of those PhDs are earned. It’s just a statistic: Only a few top universities have top-ten future PhD stats as well (averaged over all disciplines): CalTech, MIT, UChicago, Yale. Stanford, OTOH, more than any other school, is likely responsible for U.S. dominance in technology; it doesn’t have to be the best at everything.</p>
<p>How the smaller schools do it is well known: Self-selecting students (especially USP and ACP?), small classes, individual mentoring, undergrad research.</p>