<p>It is my experience that popularity begets popularity and may have little to do with substantive differences at a latter point in time. The unpopular kid- for whatever reason justified it years ago- stays unpopular, the popular kid stay popular and can do no wrong. Reputations are hard to change. </p>
<p>I'd like to know how many of the 'peers' have even been to the schools they are rating, or have the ability to base their rating on any objective comparables. They aren't lacking integrity, they just don't have anything else to go on but reputation and branding like everyone else.</p>
<p>Harvard, Princeton and Yale are the big three, and only three. They have been for years. 2 is too small to be a group, 4 a tad too big...3 is just right and ensures exclusivity.</p>
<p>Same, perhaps, with Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore. Pomona in my mind is just as good in most quantifiable respects. But it doesn't go together with the first 3, and 4 isn't as exclusive. My east coast bias for sure. And we need exclusivity to strive for. The same people who apply to HYP would apply to AWS if they have any interest in LACs.</p>
<p>Perhaps a better way to assign a number to a school for it's "quality" (peer assessment)--- poll grad (and med, law etc) school deans and employers who may have a better handle on how well so and so undergrad school DID, after the fact, in educating its graduates. Or at least to incorporate these "opinions" in some way into peer review score. I know that's a flawed idea (also biased and samples not large enough) too...but still it might give a tad more credence than the current system. It's why for instance I like the Wall Street Journal MBA rankings, although many on CC don't. There, it's the recruiters who judge how well the B School did in educating their graduates, looking backwards, not the deans of various undergraduate schools who don't know any more than you or I about some schools they're rating.</p>
<p>^^^ the Big Three are also athletic rivals. I can't remember the last time Swarthmore traveled outside of Pennsylvania for an intercollegiate sport.</p>