I was going to post something remarkably similar to what salliakeerie posted but i see now I don’t need to.
My point is, it’s silly to try to make something subjective, objective. Especially since you have to come up with subjective exceptions to your system like eliminating Berea and BYU and maybe public Ivies and schools with ED.
If you think a specific definition of “elite” is silly, pointless or not applicable, why are you participating in a discussion of what the definition of elite should be?
Curious…
Becuase i had an answer to
…which I gave in post #5. Now I stay for exposure to more verbs like “flyspecking” 
Also to say Berea isn’t particularly religious at all, certainly not in the BYU sense. It’s very progressive, actually, and never has been affiliated with any particular religious sect.
I find certain human obsessions to be fascinating. And the subject of this thread is no doubt an obsession of this place and as someone noted one that is discussed over and over again. Its like there is a competition to see how can we possibly nuance the same discussion yet again.
YTAR is silly. The 2012 chart linked by northwesty shows the University of Chicago at #40 with a YTAR of 1.36, based on a yield of 38% and an admit rate of 28%. Then they switched to the Common App and simplified the application essay requirements, which many potential applicants had found too onerous to bother with. Applications went through the roof, their admit rate plummeted to 8%, and yield shot up to 61%, which would now give them a YTAR of 7.62, which would place them #3 on the 2012 chart, behind Harvard and Stanford (the latter by a whisker). Perhaps some would say this new figure actually reflects Chicago’s “eliteness.” But really? They moved up from #40 to #3 just by changing the application process? IMO, YTAR doesn’t tell us anything truly useful because there are simply too many variables that go into both yield and admit rate.
BC – admit rates can be manipulated to some extent. Yields rates much less so.
My YTAR chart is old data – class of 2012 so 8 years old at this point.
UC’s yield rate didn’t go up from 38% to 61% because of the Common App. Since getting more applications doesn’t improve yield.
Their yield likely went up because they started using ED more. Which now puts them on an apples-to-apples basis with peer schools like Columbia, Duke, etc. So their prior yield/YTAR was somewhat aberrant because their admissions practices were out of market. Their current numbers (based on market admissions practices) seem pretty legit to me.
“Also to say Berea isn’t particularly religious at all, certainly not in the BYU sense. It’s very progressive, actually, and never has been affiliated with any particular religious sect.”
Berea and BYU are EXACTLY the same in that both are essentially tuition free. Price messes up the yield statisitcs, which is why the discussing in-state tuition/high yields at state schools.
Many commented above that “elite” seems to suggest (i) be tied to a school that is hard to get into and (ii) one that people rarely turn down. YTAR measures those.
Others also commented that “elite” means a place that large numbers of people are willing to pay a high price for. I’d agree with that. If you could add a full price/full pay aspect to YTAR, the data would be even better.
top 25 usnews or top 10 lac
Berea has a great mission, but no a school with a 24 avg. ACT is not elite. While it’s hard to generalize, USNWR Top 25 Universities and Top-15 LAC’s would probably fit the elite profile.
“Elite is a term I would never use to describe or categorize a university. And “public ivy” is an oxymoron in my book, there is no such thing as a private educational experience at any big public”
So Harvard, Yaie Stanford not elite?
And as the parent of a child at a top 10 private university and another at a " public Ivy" I can say that there is little difference in their educational experience.
FYI, I am also OOS for California when I was applying to colleges and am now considering I still reside in my hometown(NYC).
However, from having plenty of HS classmates and relatives who entered the engineering/cs fields…with a few having been tenure-track/tenured engineering/CS faculty…Berkeley is ranked in the creme de la creme apex alongside schools like MIT/Caltech/CMU/Stanford in engineering/CS.
The fact it happens to be a public university which doesn’t offer any/much OOS undergrads FA/merit money* isn’t a factor in determining whether it’s elite academically or not.
If anything, one can make a plausible argument that the fact they don’t feel the need to offer much/any merit money underscores their eliteness because they attract enough high stats students to not have to bother doing so.
If it’s the top school you can succeed at, that’s an elite school for you
Cobrat – for the public Ivies, the most apples-to-apples comparison would be to look at how their OOS operation compares to the elite privates. How many OOS full payors do they have? What’s the admit rate for OOS applicants? And what’s the yield on their OOS offers?
UVA, UCB etc. should get elite points to the extent that they are competing with elite privates for the same students at comparable price points (i.e. full OOS prices without much merit aid).
Chembiodad – USNWR top 25 U plus top 10/15 LAC is highly similar to the YTAR list. Which is why I like the YTAR metric so much. That very narrow dataset gets you to almost the same place that the much more convoluted USNWR methodology does.
My definition of “elite” is the Groucho principle – everyone wants to be a member of the club that won’t have them as a member. YTAR is a good measure of Groucho-ness.
Good question, I would probably say the top 30 or so US news institutions are “elite”. I mainly say top 30+ instead of the common 25 is because of Tufts and NYU lol. NYU CAS might leave much to be desired but with Stern, Tisch, and the Law School it’s hard not to consider them elite. And Tufts is very selective with a great IR program. IMO elite and prestige are different as William&Mary is prestigious but not necessarily elite, while USC( and Georgia Tech to a lesser extent) is elite but not necessarily prestigious. A way to measure these shouldn’t be by “wow” factor as that is regional, but by consistent production of great graduates that reach the heights of there fields, consistent excellence is key in my opinion.
NYU is not a pubic university.
Not too sure about that considering that leaves out Reed College whose academic rigor/workload is up there with schools like UChicago, JHU, Swat, Cornell, etc.
Also, I knew several colleagues and friends who are alums from the current Top 10 LACs who’d be lucky to survive a semester at Reed or those other unusually academically rigorous schools…assuming they didn’t flunk out or withdraw beforehand as a result of knowing they were about to flunk out.
I don’t think difficultly = being elite. Trinity University is probably as or more difficult than Rice but I would not consider it ‘elite’ even if it has the #1 regional ranking.
@northwesty, I’m not a fan of YAR as it doesn’t account for adjacencies in applications one would submit or the lack thereof - West Point stands on its own, one who applies to W&L would like few other similar schools. one who applies to a NE LAC would likely have applied to/been accepted at many similar schools, etc… I’ll stick with avg SAT or ACT scores as my definition of elite if one is needed.
Reed doesn’t do well in usnwr because reed chooses not to participate in submitting info to usnwr.
Wasn’t Reed the school where students scrounged food from leftovers? How can a school be elite when its poor students are starving?