@FriendlyNerd888
All of those are elite on my list…
@kaarboer
Haha oops, I meant to reply to moscott, the poster above me, who said HYPSM was the only consensus elite and that any college outside of that would be open to debate.
@moscott
^^^ In confirmation, how can Caltech and Chicago not be elite if the are one and two nationally in SAT scores. To say they are not – at least by the prevailing standards of this thread – is almost to profess, “I know nothing about colleges.”
To be clear, I’m not saying those listed aren’t elite, quite the contrary. That said there is a reason that HYPSM and no others are part of the acronym. I guess they would be the elite of the elite in a sense. To put it back into a sports analogy the consensus is that Jordan, Gretzky and Rice are considered to be the best at their respective positions, elite of the elite. Once you get into what others still call elite players such as Kobe Bryant, Jaromir Jagr, and Derek Jeter, there still results in a debate as to whether they are the best of the best.
@robbietoy
Because Wesleyan can pull nationally and is well-respected for teaching.
Look at this from a non-CC perspective. Even my prior definition is probably too restrictive, as there are 3000 4-year institutions of higher education, so the top 5% would probably be considered ‘elite’ in my book, even if there’s a difference in eliteness between, say, Montana State and Stanford.
Really? What percentage of its applicants are OOS? How do they compare, academically, with those IS? What percentage of the final student body do they make up? Do they end up with students from all 50 states on their main campus?
Of course, under my last, broader definition, ASU is also elite, so…
It is not a meaningful or useful way to describe a college or university, any more than we would talk of elite countries. Does Belgium rate? Is Germany more elite than Holland? I’m probably guilty of using the term myself, but I think that “highly selective” is perhaps a better term, even though selectivity does not necessarily equal better educational quality.