<p>Ecliptica, Smith...right there in your native Massachusetts.</p>
<p>Hmm. Under my fuzzy set of preferences, I would take Davidson over Wake Forest, Georgetown over Davidson, though that last could change depending on majors.</p>
<p>Ahh, it was one or the other. I know Emory advertises a shirt that says "Undefeated since 18 something or other" because they don't have a football team.</p>
<p>I completely agree, Georgetown is a better school than Davidson, but Davidson is a better "fit" for me.</p>
<p>good sports teams make more students apply which means they school can choose the best applicants from a larger group... Virginia Tech has gotten harder to get into in the last few years since their football team was big.</p>
<p>Prior to my college search, I had only heard of Davidson because they played in the NCAA basketball tournament occasionally.</p>
<p>The majority of Americans in my opinion know of a few top schools: harvard, princeton, yale, most likely some of the other prestigous schools in their area, say a local college. Other than that, most of the time their state university is the only other college (or one of a few other) that they know anything about in relation to their academics. </p>
<p>So many kids (and adults) are fans of Duke, Michigan, Notre Dame, North Carolina, UCLA, etc. from all across the nation because of their ability to throw a ball into a hoop/get a pig across an arbitrary line on a field. Atleast, this is in my expierence. College Confidential's readers are, in my opinion, a bit skewed in their perception of the average american if they think they recognize any top LAC (although that is an uncontested point) potentially some of hte lower ivys (debateable) and a lot of top publics (I'll say most people don't know of Wisconsin's rep)/privates (for example Univ of Chicago/JHU/Tufts). At the very least, only people in a specific region know of the school's academics.</p>