I literally fed the following sentence into my AI search engine:
“What are the selective LACs?“
and basically it spat out a refinement of the phrase into “selective liberal arts college“. Then, a definition of what it meant by “selective“ (“generally admitting less than 40% of applicants“) Then it listed six “examples“ (Pomona, Swarthmore, Colby Amherst, Williams, and Wesleyan). If you follow the prompt to “dive deeper in AI mode“, you will get three or four more paragraphs that basically repeat what was just said, but with citations and a somewhat bigger list of between 12-15 colleges that will change slightly each time you repeat press the “deep dive“ prompt.
It is noteworthy that the algorithm never actually creates a list of every college with less than 40% admission rates but will stop - almost intuitively - at roughly the number 12 or so, sometimes alphabetically and sometimes in order of admit percentage.
YMMV, but when I punch in the phrase, “What are the Little Ivies?“, it arrives fairly quickly at a list of pretty much the same 12 colleges but will include Tufts and omit any school not on the east coast (already, I can see why this might not be a popular phrase.
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