<p>I’d like to offer a paean to Georgetown. As the nation’s oldest Catholic university, Georgetown is a terrific school and arguably the most connected college in America when it comes to matters relating to the US government, particularly foreign affairs. In these areas, Georgetown is most definitely a peer to the most highly ranked schools in the USA. The student quality, as drawn from a highly selective admissions process, is high and geographically diverse (Mid-Atl 39%, NE 12%, MW 10%, SE 14%, W 13%, SW 4%, Int’l 7%). The students and alumni are very devoted to the school, displaying nearly unsurpassed loyalty to the school and providing important postgraduate connections. </p>
<p>IMO, the colleges that would be most similar in size, student caliber and school environment would be:</p>
<p>Georgetown, 6853 undergrads, 1390 avg SAT, 22% Acceptance Rate</p>
<p>About the same size for undergraduates:
Duke, 6330 undergrads, 1465 SAT, 21% accepted
Wash U, 7386 undergrads, 1450 SAT, 21% accepted
Brown, 6010 undergrads, 1440 SAT, 14% accepted
Northwestern, 8153 undergrads, 1410 SAT, 30% accepted
Vanderbilt, 6378 undergrads, 1370 SAT, 34% accepted
Emory, 6646 undergrads, 1350 SAT, 32% accepted
Notre Dame, 8352 undergrads, 1345 SAT, 27% accepted</p>
<p>A little larger:
U Penn, 9730 undergrads, 1420 SAT, 18% accepted</p>
<p>A little smaller:
Columbia, 4184 undergrads, 1420 SAT, 10% accepted
Tufts, 4995 undergrads, 1410 SAT, 27% accepted
Wake Forest, 4332 undergrads, 1340 SAT</p>
<p>There is some modest crossover in the applicant pool with some of the more prominent publics, most actively U Virginia, although they have different characteristics than the privates mentioned above. </p>
<p>W&M, 5734 undergrads, 1350 SAT, 32% accepted
U Virginia, 14,676 undergrads, 1325 SAT, 37% accepted
U North Carolina, 17,124 undergrads, 1290 SAT, 34% accepted
UC Berkeley, 23,863 undergrads, 1325 SAT, 24% accepted
U Michigan, 25, 555 undergrads, 1315 SAT, 47% accepted</p>
<p>Re the rankings for Georgetown, the school would likely enjoy a higher ranking but for two factors, both of which relate to its Jesuit history. First, the Peer Assessment scoring (worth 25%) is a 4.1. Historically, the academic world has been hostile to Catholic universities (eg, Notre Dame at 3.9!, Boston College at 3.6!) and this comes thru in these scores from persons in the academic world. (I would personally argue that Georgetown’s rep in the business world is much better.) Georgetown has shed some of this, but not completely and its lack of research in technical fields is another likely impediment to a high PA score. </p>
<p>The second factor hurting Georgetown’s ranking is its Faculty Resources ranking where it places 40th. Catholic schools have a reputation for frugality and this perhaps has led to operating patterns at Georgetown that result is in this lower ranking. For example, Georgetown only provides 57% of its classes with fewer than 20 students. As you might expect, the publics of Virginia, Michigan, UCLA, North Carolina, Wisconsin, UCSD, Ga Tech all fall below this level (but not UC Berkeley at 59%), but the only Top 40 privates that do are Johns Hopkins (51%), Catholic Notre Dame (50%), Wake Forest (54%), and Catholic Boston College (38%). </p>
<p>31% of Georgetown’s undergraduates major in the Social Sciences (in the Top 40, modestly smaller only to Harvard, Duke, U Chicago, and Tufts)) and another 25% in Business & Marketing. Georgetown’s undergraduate business school profile is not exceptional although the McDonough school is generally well regarded and places students effectively onto Wall Street and elsewhere.</p>