<p>Personally, I’m outcomes focused.</p>
<p>So I’d use a combination of the “American Leaders”, PhD production, and competitive national student awards rankings (all sub-categories of Forbes ranking) and the WSJ professional school feeders ranking. Also add in some criteria which I personally care about (Wall Street targets and startup entrepreneurs produced).</p>
<p>That would separate out some of the top elite privates (Vandy isn’t in the top 50 of any of those 4 rankings despite entering SAT scores that are comparable to the other private elites while all the Ivies besides UPenn + Caltech, MIT, Stanford, Duke, Rice, & UChicago are in the top 50 of all 4; UPenn, Northwestern, & JHU just miss the top 50 in some). Meanwhile, Cal, despite average SAT scores that are below these private elites, does as well as UPenn, Northwestern, & JHU (and better than Vandy and WashU).
Some schools are top 30 or top 10 in all 4. </p>
<p>The LACs do VERY well. I’ll publish these rankings/tiers at some point.</p>