What are Northwestern's "peer schools?"

I don’t mix the publics with the privates… but if I did, I might put Berkeley in the Duke/NU/Dartmouth tier and Michigan and UVA in the ND/G’town/Vandy tier. All the schools that have been mentioned are awesome (and there are more…).

How about LACs:

1a. Williams
1b. Amherst, Swat, Pomona
2. Bowdoin, Midd, Wellesley
3. Carleton, CMC, Hamilton, Haverford, Mudd, Smith, Vassar, W&L, Wes
4. Colby, Davidson, Grinnell, Oberlin
5. Barnard, Bates, CC, Bryn Mawr, Kenyon, Mac, Scripps…?

Should i just combine 4 and 5?

sensible comments from prezbucky

If you ask the average sophisticated educated person in London, Berlin or Paris, you would invariably get this list.

Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, UChicago, Yale, Columbia and Princeton. These are also remarkably consistent with the world university rankings. The only constant here are the top positions H, S and M.

Based on responses herein, looks like Duke, Dartmouth and Brown are NU’s closest peers at the undergraduate level.

I think WashU is a fair Midwest peer school, too.

Definitely Barnard College of Columbia University. Both are more urban schools in large cities. Barnard is a small liberal arts college but it has ALL the resources of Columbia U. Barnard women take classes at CU and CU students take classes at Barnard. They share a campus and Barnard women join CU sororities/ sports team/ clubs/ publications/ societies. Barnard women graduate at CU graduation and get Columbia degrees. Very unique school.

@NYCGirl33 Yes, Barnard is a great school - NU is not as urban as Barnard is though.