I would go one step further and state that USC and Northwestern can do that due to history of academic rigor and a much larger endowment.
Northwestern has 10.2 Billion dollar endowment, while USC has 4.2 Billion. They can increase their class size while not sacrificing quality. School's with great academic quality and bigger endowments, can get larger without sacrificing quality. Both of those schools have a much larger postgraduate population than undergraduate. Both their undergraduate and many of their main postgraduate programs, are highly regarded. Without a medical school, it will be hard to try and do the same, since most of the research opportunities and money are associated with medical schools. Rice should be SMU's model with more competitive sports. Stanford, Duke, and Notre Dame are the prototypes of great academics and sports tradition. They will consistently get 3 or 4 star recruits, that know if they do not make it to the pros, they will have a good job.
All of those school's listed are Aspirational Peer Universities according to SMU (
https://www.smu.edu/Provost/IR/Resource ... iversities). I doubt the majority of those schools find SMU as their peer. In addition, almost all of those schools have medical schools and larger endowments per students. Our peers according to SMU are: Syracuse, Baylor, TCU, Tulsa, and University of Miami.
The lack of prestige in US News ranking for undergraduate education is a Texas issue outside of Rice. Both UT and Texas A&M should be ranked higher but for the top ten percent law and other factors. In addition, all the private schools in Texas aren't doing well either. Higher education in Texas is a mess. If we want to continue to associate ourselves with our Texas peers, SMU is not going to advance. For a state of this size, and the amount of business the state receives, all of the schools are pretty lackluster. California higher education system should be the prototype for Texas. They are all fairly new schools that grew with prestige. While we do not have Silicon Valley, our oil & energy money hasn't helped Texas as much as the Silicon Valley money in California. The Silicon Valley has spent more money on academic programs, while Texan's oil men have spent money on athletics. For example, Dedman School of Law naming rights was bought for only $20 million. That is the price dorm naming rights are at most prestigious colleges and universities.
When I applied to SMU for undergrad I got a full ride, but I decided to go to a top 10 school in the east coast. If I stayed in Texas it was either UT or Rice--they both didn't give me a good financial aid package. Beyond my acceptance letter SMU did a bad job recruiting me. Most of the top schools that I applied to, flew me to visit the school, had alumni interviews, and first year acceptance events in Dallas at an alums house so that I could make a more informed decision. SMU needs to proactively recruit, especially outside Texas. I am not sure if SMU does this, but if they want to compete, they definitely need to implement this type of moves on top of doing more rigorous research and acquiring more accomplished faculty.
For private schools, the competitiveness of the undergrad reflects the grad programs--specifically in law and business schools. Public schools are very different so we shouldn't model ourselves after them. While Cox and Dedman have their own issues, there is a correlation with a more competitive undergrad helps the grad programs. The same kids that get rejected for undergrad, will eventually apply to the respective programs for grad school at the same institutions.