Wanted to post it on here to get an unbiased perspective. Which colleges, do you personally think, are peers of Tufts?
Schools I imagine have a fair number of split cross admits with Tufts: Boston College, Cornell, NYU, Northwestern, Wesleyan, Colgate, Lehigh, Colby, Hamilton, Amherst, Bucknell, Boston University, and maybe Penn State.
You can view it as a large LAC or as a University. I think it can be appealing to someone targeting either one. It also has engineering, which broadens the base of potential applicants.
Some schools I’d put in a similar group (very good mid-size university) offhand might be BC, William & Mary, Carnegie Mellon,URochester, Lehigh. Certainly there are many others.
Boston University and Penn State are in no way peers of Tufts.
By size and range of curricula, URochester, Case Western?
BC, Rochester, CWRU, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, USC and mostly LACs like Bowdoin, Amherst, Colby, Hamilton, Wesleyan (as Tufts is a NESCAC school). I would say a tier above BU and Penn State and a tier below Cornell and Northwestern.
@Chardo ‘s link is ideal. It tells you who Tufts thinks its peers are, and what schools think they are Tufts’ peers.
Interestingly Tufts doesn’t think any other NESCAC schools are its peers - just Ivies and a handful of elite Us. A couple of NESCACs think they are Tufts peers, though 
Emory?
As a student admitted to Tufts and attending, I think Tufts’ selectivity is definitely up there and close to or at the level of schools like Cornell or Hopkins. However, its low endowment and less graduate focus (leading to lower graduate rankings) definitely makes it difficult to be in the same tier as Cornell or Hopkins, but it is in the same tier with the schools I listed above. Emory might count in that tier as well. In the end of the day, whether you go to BU or Tufts or Cornell or Harvard won’t matter, just what you make out of it.
1 Like
By academic rep:
U of Rochester, Lehigh, Tulane, BC, Wake Forest, Brandeis, Case Western, BU, NYU, USC, maybe Northeastern
Brandeis, U of Rochester, Tulane, U of Michigan, U of North Carolina, Lehigh, Wake Forest, BC, Emory, Case Western Reserve.
@prezbucky honestly, I think your list is outdated. Maybe a decade or two ago this list would be accurate, but I think Tufts is a cut above the rest of all of the schools you list (except USC). I always thought Tufts’ peers to be schools like Northwestern, Brown, Cornell, Hopkins, Rice, and WashU – and so did my guidance counselor. Having gone through the college process recently, and seeing the caliber of students who apply to Tufts, I think the schools I listed would be more on par with Tufts. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, though.
@Chardo thanks for the informative link. Seems like many of the Ivies outside HYP and other top-notch schools selected Tufts as their peer. Also to note: this was published in 2012, so I wonder what it would look like now. Tufts is now even more competitive (and just this year Tufts’ median ACT jumped from a 31 to 33!).
I’m sorry, but Tufts’ academic rep is not competitive with any Ivy, Northwestern, Duke, Chicago, Stanford, MIT, JHU. Tufts’ programs/majors are not competitive with them either reputationally or by most ranking formulas.
Tufts might be approaching the Notre Dame/Georgetown/Emory/Vandy/CMU/WUSTL/Rice peer group, but i don’t think it’s there yet either.
What is helping Tufts most is the impoving admissions profile, a credit to its students. But the academic output and plaudits need to come in for a while, and academic program rankings need to improve, before they can move out of the rep group they are in.
(the group they are in, BTW, comprises excellent schools, some of whom have more academic strength, or at least rep, than Tufts – like NYU, URochester, Tulane, Brandeis, BC. But Tufts’ student strength makes up the difference, IMO.)
I agree with @prezby97’s assessment above. In any event @ap012199 you asked for opinions and sorry if you don’t like hearing assessments that are different from your own. Tufts is a great school and there is no need to seek out these kind of comparisons if it is the best fit school for you then go there happily and proudly.
@prezbucky I agree that Tufts’ academic rep is not that of an Ivy. However, many of its programs, such as its IR program, are some of the best in the nation. I believe Tufts’ reputation is on the rise, and I think the institution will be vying for a spot as one of the top universities in years to come. But only time will tell!
I still do not agree that the schools you list have better academics than Tufts. They are more well known schools, but I know few kids who would turn down a spot at Tufts for the schools you list as Tufts’ peers. I think Tufts’ peers to be the schools you think Tufts is approaching in rep. I think Tufts is already there.
@happy1 gathering perspectives was the point of this thread. I enjoy everyone’s responses, whether or not I agreee with them!
This is a great link. You can see what Tufts thinks and what other schools think of Tufts.
Wash U, Rice