Mustangs_Maroons wrote:Pepperdine is certainly not an aspirational school. It’s probably very similar in many regards to SMU - sat scores, student profiles, etc.
I meant aspirational schools those that I would place into three buckets: I) elite private academic institutions that have D1 sports in P5 program: Stanford, ND, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Duke and II) elite private universities that don’t have P5 D1 programs but that we would benefit greatly from academically: Uchicago, WUSTL, Rice, and III) those Ivies that have a smaller school feel (and have the benefit of D1 sports): Brown, Dartmouth.
Pepperdine is like us - those listed about are true aspirational private universities.
Fair enough.
SMU officially considers the following as "Aspirational Peers" - Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, Emory, Northeastern, Notre Dame, Tufts, Tulane, U. of Rochester, USC, and Wake Forest.
It considers the following "Cohort Peers" - American, Baylor, Fordham, George Washington, Lehigh, Pepperdine, Syracuse, TCU, U. of Denver, U. of Miami, U. of Tulsa, and Villanova.
https://www.smu.edu/-/media/Files/PDF/A ... .pdf?la=en