The Bottom Of The Ivies

A week ago, I linked to YouTube testimony from a disaffected Brown student, Alex Shieh, who pointed out that applicants from designated prep schools that act as Ivy "feeders" have a big advantage over other applicants, and that the Ivy system is effectively designed around the wealthy and the upper bourgeoisie, whose offspring attend these schools. This simply repeats an observation about the Ivies that's become commonplace.

Then, earlier this week, I began to wonder if the Brown shooting rampage would affect Brown's standing in the US News college rankings. That in turn reminded me that Brown has traditionally been regarded as at the bottom of the Ivies. Chrome AI mode says, "In the mid-20th century, Brown was sometimes viewed as a 'poor relation' or 'on the fringe' compared to the older, more established social prestige of the 'Big Three'". However, this has changed: The bottom of the Ivies is now Dartmouth, which tied with Brown at 13 in the US News 2025 rankings. According to Ivy Coach Daily:

Dartmouth College rose in its US News ranking to [13th], up from 18th the prior year. Still, Dartmouth has the lowest ranking among the Ivies, which is largely the byproduct of the US News ranking methodology, which tends to benefit larger universities that often have a greater population of economically disadvantaged students (Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League).

The proportion of economically disadvantaged students among the Ivies is relative indeed, as Alex Shieh pointed out. But I'm intrigued that since I was a student at Dartmouth in the 1960s, its reputation has fallen so far, to the point that 2025 was a good year if it could just pull even with Brown. At the same link,

US News downgraded Brown University’s ranking to 13th place nationally for its 2025 edition, down from 9th in 2024.

Whew, Brown had to drop out of the top ten just so Dartmouth could pull even with it! I asked Chrome AI mode, "Has Dartmouth's position in the US News Rankings declined in recent years?" It replied,

Dartmouth College's ranking in U.S. News & World Report has trended slightly downward over the past 20 years, shifting from a consistent top 10 position in the early 2000s to the low-to-mid teens by 2025. 20-Year High: It frequently ranked #7 in the 1990s and maintained a top 10 presence (e.g., #9 in 2011) for much of the subsequent decade.

Current Standing: As of late 2025, Dartmouth is ranked #13 among National Universities, an improvement from its recent low of #18 in the 2024 edition.

So Dartmouth has moved from somewhere in the middle, below Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but above Brown, Cornell, and Penn, to the bottom, below Brown and consistently out of the top ten. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Has the Dartmouth Board of Trustees had any public reaction to Dartmouth's decline in college rankings?" It answered,

The Dartmouth Board of Trustees has not issued a formal, dedicated public statement reacting to recent fluctuations in college rankings. Instead, the administration and Board have generally adopted a stance of downplaying the significance of rankings as a primary measure of institutional success.

Key elements of their collective reaction and messaging in 2024 and 2025 include:

- Redefining Success: President Sian Beilock, in consultation with the Board, has stated that Dartmouth should be evaluated by the "knowledge we contribute" and the "caliber of leaders we produce" rather than "simply by prestige, or rankings, or endowment size". . .

- Focus on Internal Metrics: Recent Board discussions have focused on internal "priorities of impact" rather than external lists, specifically touting improvements in student mental health, campus housing, and financial aid expansion.

Blah blah blah. Nevertheless, I seem to recall there was a brouhaha some years ago when the admissions office, for whatever reason, reduced the proportion of athletes in its admissions quotas. I think it might be reasonable to surmise that this would have the effect of raising average test scores in an entering class, which in turn could impact its ranking. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Did Dartmouth reduce the number of admissions slots reserved for athletes?" It answered,

Yes, Dartmouth has reduced the number of admissions slots reserved for recruited athletes.

Starting in 2020, the college implemented a 10% reduction in the number of recruited athletes per entering class. This policy was established to provide the admissions office with more flexibility in shaping the incoming class and to balance the student body between athletic and other pursuits.

Key details regarding this reduction include:

- Targeted Reduction: The goal was specifically to reduce the number of "recruited" athletes in each class by 10%.

Now we're atarting to get someplace. Regular vistiors know that one of my favorite topics is the relative size of elite-school admissions quotas: if we acknowledge that elite schools traditionally treat public high school graduates applying on the basis of grades, SATs, and extracurriculars as just one admissions category among several, which may also include athletes, preppies, and legacies, what is the actual relative size of the "meritocratic" admissions quota?

The\ short answer is that this is a closely guarded secret among all the nominally "selective" schools. But we can estimate its size if we can get an idea of the relative size of the other major categories. Chrome AI mode gave part of the game away farther down in its answer:

Recent reports from late 2025 indicate that the admission of recruited athletes [at Dartmouth] has become more selective as a direct result of these reduced slots. While the number of recruited spots decreased, athletes still represent a significant portion of the student body, comprising roughly 19% of the undergraduate population as of late 2025.

But if the current proportion of athletes, admitted in a separate quota, is 19%, and this represents a reduction of 10%, then the previous quota must have been something more like 21%. In other words, even with a reduction, something like 20% of applicants to this elite school have always been admitted on the basis primarily of athletic ability, not intelligence, and Dartmouth has been able to increase its standing by slightly tweaking this quota. This is astonishing.

But in this post, I linked to a story in The Atlantic that said,

Less than 2 percent of the nation’s students attend so-called independent schools. But 24 percent of Yale’s class of 2024 attended an independent school. At Princeton, that figure is 25 percent. At Brown and Dartmouth, it is higher still: 29 percent.

So at Dartmouth, we can say with a fair degree of assurance that the quota for preppies is 29%, while the quota for athletes is 19%, or something at least close to those numbers, which puts just those two quotas at 48%, which amounts to nearly half of all those accepted in recent entering classes. But this leaves out quotas for other generally recognized groups, including legacies, foreign students, and children of celebrities, politicians, and major donors, not to mention DEI.

All of these quotas are probably relatively quite a bit higher than we might normally assume; I never would have imagined the quota for athletes would be as high as 19%, much less higher. If we give these others values in the 10-20% range, we can begin to surmise that the quota for public high school students applying on the basis of SATs, grades, and extracurriculars, the "meritocratic" group, is much lower than we might think -- I've estimated this at 20% here, but even that may be optimistic.

As I've said, a question that's been at the back of my mind ever since I was a Dartmouth undergraduate is why my schoolmates turned out to be so unexceptional. I'm still working on a satisfactory answer, but I think I'm making progress.