http://www.usnews.com/articles/educ...t-popular-colleges-national-universities.html Basically, they ranked the colleges by the % of accepted applicants who ended up enrolling at the school. Not surprisingly, the seven Ivy League schools that were founded before the USA was founded all did well: Harvard #1, Yale #6, Princeton #7, UPenn #8, Columbia #11, Brown #12, Dartmouth #18. And not surprisingly, Stanford was #4 and MIT was #5. It was interesting to see how crappy Pac-10 schools did, especially Southern Cal: SEC #10 Florida #16 LSU #20 Georgia #22 Bama #27 Tenn #30 Kentucky #33 Arkansas #45 South Carolina #50 Vandy #73 Auburn NR Miss St NR Ole Miss Big 12 #3 Nebraska #13 aTm #17 Texas #21 K State #23 Oklahoma #26 Mizzou #37 Iowa State #40 Kansas #70 Colorado #108 Baylor NR Texas Tech NR Oklahoma State Big Ten #25 Ohio State #35 Illinois #41 Michigan #42 Wisconsin #44 Mich State #65 Indiana #67 Minnesota #71 Iowa #76 Northwestern #80 Purdue #83 Penn St Pac 10 #4 Stanford #34 Washington #46 Washington State #48 Cal #49 Ariz St #53 Arizona #57 UCLA #62 Oregon #72 Southern Cal NR Oregon State http://www.usnews.com/articles/educ...t-popular-colleges-national-universities.html
They get screwed because they are close to each other in US News rankings but they aren't Ivy League schools - plus they are close to each other geographically.
If a school took just about anyone, that would make it even more impressive if they had a high % of accepted students that actually decided to enroll.
Pac-10 schools are very geographically spread out. The Ivy League schools, on the other hand, are very close to each other geographically. And if you think Pac-10 schools are close to Ivy League schools academic-wise (which they aren't), wouldn't that make it more likely that accepted students would want to enroll there, like they do in the Ivy League schools?
Speaking of Alabama and Nick Saban, I'm not surprised by how popular Alabama is compared to Auburn. I've always felt that most Alabama kids would rather go to Bama over Auburn. Also, I'm not surprised that Bama and LSU are so popular, I'm not surprised that a good coach will have top 10 recruiting classes at those schools. Compare to schools like South Carolina, Oregon State, and Arizona State... and how hard it was/is for Dennis Erickson, Lou Holtz, and Steve Spurrier to get kids to want to go to those schools. Also notice aTm, which is a sleeping giant located in talent-rich Texas. It is surprising that they don't have Top 10 recruiting classes every year.
LSU and Bama are their state's flagship universities. not so with Oregon St(oregon), and Arizona St (az) and USCe has clemson to deal with.
