<p>WashU is known to game for rankings purposes. It’s a fine university, but when you look at the few lognormal professions where brand matters (MC, high finance, and maybe trying to launch a tech startup), it just doesn’t do that well compared to the Ivies or most of the other Ivy-equivalents or even the top state schools like Cal/UMich/UVa/UT-Austin/UCLA or certain programs at other publics (worse than Kelley-IU at placing in to an IB and worse pipeline in to the Silicon Valley startup world than CS@Illinois).</p>
<p>Only JHU and Emory do as badly among the Ivy-equivalents in those fields.</p>