<p>BiTWIX, I agree about the places where there are supposed to be good-looking students getting a boost because of that. My list wasn't comprehensive. I was just trying to make the point that in rankings like US News' that pretend to be about "academic quality" but factor in stats that have more to do with "popularity" (such as % accepted) the schools that have a lot of non-academic-related features that 17-year-olds tend to like (pretty campus, attractive students, famous sports teams, mild weather, interesting location, nice-sounding name, etc) are going to get more applications than other schools of similar academic quality but with less attractive NON-academic features. So at one end of the spectrum you've got places like Vanderbilt and Georgetown and Duke which seem to have ALL the non-academic features students like, and at the other end you've got places like Case Western Reserve, with excellent professors and...that's about it.</p>