Just got the latest Vanderbilt Magazine in the mail. The feature story is on admissions (also several ancillary stories) I don’t know if the online version is the same as print but here is a lnk to the publicatoin: http://news.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbiltmagazine/
I just read this article this afternoon and had planned to link it. I’m glad to see you beat me to it, @LBowie. I think the article does a good job of managing expectations for those who will be going through the admissions process this year. I thought it was particularly interesting to read the data on how many more kids are applying to more than 3 and more than 7 colleges now as compared to 1990 and how it is affecting selectivity at the top schools. A “must read” for aspiring applicants and their parents!
It is interesting and very telling to see which universities high school seniors consider peer schools of VU based on where they apply. The top 5 schools with overlap applications with Vandy are:
- Duke
- Harvard
- Stanford
- Yale
- Princeton
In my personal opinion, I think that of the top 20 schools, there are 6 that the “average” US citizen do not know. Rice, Vandy, Notre Dame (if they do know, it’s because of football), WUSTL, Northwestern, and Chicago. I would have included Emory here, but they got replaced by Berkeley 
There have been lots of times where I tell people that I go to Vandy, and they ask “where is that again?”. They just don’t know the name, and thus, don’t understand that it’s a top 20 school.
Perhaps I’m a bit biased, but I think that Vandy is the closest on that list to break into the mainstream America. It’s admissions rate keeps on decreasing, it’s test scores are equal to that of HYPSM, and it’s getting more public exposure due to the “Happiest Students” thing. Also the rape thing, but I don’t like talking about that lol.
@derp125 I think Chicago and even Northwestern have better name recognition than Vandy right now.
@cauldroncastle yeah, I kinda debated putting Chicago on that list. I dunno about Northwestern though, maybe it’s because of where I live or something.
@derp125 Notre Dame has already been part of mainstream America so remove it from that list (Chicago is pretty much there as well, even if it isn’t HYPSM level). Also, enough with the SAT thing. Its SAT’s are higher than Stanford’s and so is WashU’s (ND and Rice are pretty close to theirs). Rice and WashU students are also known to have a high quality of life. Whether they are the “happiest”, who cares? HYPMS and them don’t make that list and didn’t make it to mainstream America by making students happy, they did it by making them “leaders” (define that however…I’m not sure but they’ve likely earned their way to do well with certain metrics). The impact of their students (like Stanford supposedly producing billionaires), academics and graduate programs put them where they are, so it is less about surface things like admissions and more about academic caliber and output…which is often separate from anything else once admissions has crossed a certain threshold. Duke didn’t start moving up because of its SAT’s. Neither did Stanford. Their SAT’s are pretty normal for a top 20. They have much more going on than that even at the UG level (and certainly beyond: One would like to believe peer raters and counselors think only of the UG program for the UG rankings in USNWR, but the fact that Berkeley gets such high assessments says otherwise), and I wish people would realize that. Honestly, sports are likely to do more once you’ve crossed a certain admissions threshold, more so than the admit rate continuing to decrease and the scores continuing to increase. Eventually you get to the diminished returns category (as has WashU) with this.
I think what puts schools on the map is a) money and b) how they take advantage of the intellectual and monetary capital they have. For example, Duke and WashU have the same endowment as Emory and are yet further along in their trajectories (maybe this makes sense as they became research U’s first) in terms of academic caliber (not talking admissions here) and impact in various fields for the most part. They are clearly using their monetary and intellectual resources more strategically than many other places including Emory and places with similar or higher SAT’s. It’s about impact in the long run. NU and Rice seem most likely to get somewhere with effective marketing as they already do extremely well in some major areas even on the global scale (Rice with its physical sciences and NU with life sciences, chemistry, and a host of other things-they have an M7 MBA program for example). Vandy is more likely to take off because of sports successes unless it pushes some visible programs to the limit like many very highly ranked schools (including some newly minted ones) have and I am not just talking USNWR rankings (though the global rankings they just got are a little interesting as they are kind of a benchmark with many “household names” having many of the categorical rankings at least in the 30s, if not 20s). It may not be fair, but becoming one is not about ever increasing selectivity or “soft” rankings anymore. The number of selective schools has increased too much. Notice how Georgetown is more “famous” than maybe half of the top 20s (even though its with Emory, ranking wise) including some Ivies. It is because it had a serious impact in certain areas (like politics and foreign policy) due to the EXTREME strength of certain programs.
In the academic world they are all very well known. On “main street” no one has heard of Cal tech, Chicago is under recognized, and Wash SL doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Rice’s name rec is improving but it needs to expand its geographic diversity (50% from TX). On main street a lot of name recognition comes from athletics if you were not lucky enough to join the ivy league 200 years ago. If coach K took a job at Wake Forest they would be a top 20 university today.
Vandy’s name rec is certainly top 10-12 as is Notre Dame’s. As the cross applications show, high school students have heard of VU.
They have heard of them, but that is different than being a household name. Chicago is fine if you ask me…though it could be a little better. They kind of also don’t need to be a household name because they are recognized and ranked highly around the world for the things they do well, and like many top 20’s are recognized by the students (though that is due to marketing…they used to not have as many applicants). As for Caltech…it’s really small and almost like a “super Harvey Mudd”…much like Chicago, it doesn’t need to be a household name to be prestigious or recruit students and faculty that have a huge impact. Rice can improve without expanding the population of its incoming classes because again…certain programs of its are very influential. If they do desire to have tons of “lay” prestige, all they have to do is market their success. Some places like lay prestige, but aren’t really obsessed with being a house hold name because they’ve had so much impact in important areas to the point where many doors automatically open up for faculty or students directly affiliated with it.
Again, GT perhaps has name appeal because it has shaped or strongly impacted an area pivotal to how the country is run, politics and public policy. Duke has sports plus business, economics, and of course its life sciences boom (this is likely what launched it to recognition), and it has come into being a player in math and statistics. The research infrastructure of many of the big names are quite insane. Also, I don’t think that is true about WFU, though maybe closer to places like Virginia I guess. However, I don’t think they would be the same overall academic caliber as say…Virginia or Chapel Hill (which is arguably similar or better than maybe GT, Vandy, Emory, ND, and some others overall because their research infrastructure is so good). It would be empty name recognition that doesn’t go much beyond the UG program. Sometimes the mainstreet recognition isn’t that meaningful though. It’s nice, but it isn’t meaningful unless it comes from something that maybe seriously impacts society, healthcare, etc. Also, what ultimately sets the path, sports or not, is money. The “Magnolia League” schools, especially Duke and Emory largely benefited from huge benefactors and donors that have little to do with sports. Emory would not have remotely become a player if it were not for a couple of HUGE benefactors even if it had chosen to be D-1 and lucked up and was successful with that. It could have gained some lay prestige, but the caliber just wouldn’t be there, especially beyond the UG level. Think about this: WFU has D-1 sports but an endowment of 1.15 billion, WashU and Emory (D-3), 6.5 billion, Rice, D-1 but not super duper shiny successes, 5.5 billion, Vandy, 4 billion. I don’t think sports successes could explain the gap in caliber between WFU and these places, which are not even all D-1. It may already be more “known” than some of them (not really lol), but that is meaningless. Money first, sports next if you value lay prestige. Seems to have worked for Vandy and Duke.