http://chronicle.com/article/Peers-Inter...a/134262/?

Colleges selected by W&M as peers:

Boston C
Brown U
Dartmouth C
Duke U
Georgetown U
Miami U, Oxford
Princeton U
Tufts U
U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
U of Notre Dame
U of Virginia
Vanderbilt U
Wake Forest U

Colleges that selected W&M as a peer:

Alabama A&M U
Binghamton U
Bowdoin C
Bucknell U
C of New Jersey
Christopher Newport U
Elon U
Liberty U
Miami U, Oxford
Morgan State U
Northern Arizona U
Rowan U
Rutgers U, Newark
SUNY C, Geneseo
Texas State U, San Marcos
U of Connecticut
U of Delaware
U of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
U of North Carolina, Greensboro
U of Richmond
Wake Forest U

Colleges that W&M selected as a peer that also selected W&M as a peer:

Miami U, Oxford
Wake Forest U

Surveys like this are interesting. I think a lot comes across in how the question is posed to people. If someone is asked to list the top 5 schools they think of as peers, many schools
"we" say would not say us. But, if you were to ask someone from one of those same schools "Do you consider WM a peer?" I think many would say yes.

I would love to know who from places like Alabama A&M, Northern Arizona, or Texas State consider us peers? Peers can mean many things, but there is no geographic relation to those three (while many others are not too far from Williamsburg).

I agree, and I haven't looked into the methodology. For instance, peers could mean geographic, size, endowment, academics, athletics, etc. Is it the quality of the graduate you produce or the quality of the student you attract (to the degree they don't overlap)? I can think of a million ways that this could go.

Not a single school on those lists are peers. Wake is the closest but they're a private institution. There are no public universities similar to W&M...not elitest, just a fact.

(12-23-2014 04:03 PM)Tribal Wrote:  Not a single school on those lists are peers. Wake is the closest but they're a private institution. There are no public universities similar to W&M...not elitest, just a fact.

I don't think they were far off in selecting UNC-CH and UVA (other than size of the institutions).

I don't think they have to be public to be peers (I'm conflicted on whether I think W&M should remain public).

Not sure that I understand Liberty, Alabama A&M, etc., selecting us as a peer.

Sorry, but having 4-5x the number of students, IMO, is not a peer. Private schools like Wake & ND have soooo much more money and simply cannot be compared to W&M for that reason alone. UNC-CH and UVA are like W&M with full love from their states and many, many more students. Again, just my opinion.

(12-23-2014 04:03 PM)Tribal Wrote:  Not a single school on those lists are peers. Wake is the closest but they're a private institution. There are no public universities similar to W&M...not elitest, just a fact.

So which colleges would you consider a peer of W&M? Don't say none because W&M is not completely unique.

(12-23-2014 04:15 PM)tribe_pride Wrote:  

(12-23-2014 04:03 PM)Tribal Wrote:  Not a single school on those lists are peers. Wake is the closest but they're a private institution. There are no public universities similar to W&M...not elitest, just a fact.

So which colleges would you consider a peer of W&M? Don't say none because W&M is not completely unique.

I dunno, name another small public university with top academics. There are none.

Even UC-Davis has more than triple our enrollment. UVA and UNC-CH may be the closest...GT, Wake, Note Dame? Any of those seem like peers to our 7k public school in W'burg. Lehigh maybe?

JMU/Appy. ODU/VCU. Mason/Towson.

(12-23-2014 04:22 PM)Tribal Wrote:  

(12-23-2014 04:15 PM)tribe_pride Wrote:  

(12-23-2014 04:03 PM)Tribal Wrote:  Not a single school on those lists are peers. Wake is the closest but they're a private institution. There are no public universities similar to W&M...not elitest, just a fact.

So which colleges would you consider a peer of W&M? Don't say none because W&M is not completely unique.

I dunno, name another small public university with top academics. There are none.

Even UC-Davis has more than triple our enrollment. UVA and UNC-CH may be the closest...GT, Wake, Note Dame? Any of those seem like peers to our 7k public school in W'burg. Lehigh maybe?

JMU/Appy. ODU/VCU. Mason/Towson.

I got curious so i started looking.
Lehigh is a private and the 25/75 verbal SAT is significantly lower than that of W&M

Other privates of your size and academic standards, like the Ivy schools, have endowments in the billions and tens of billions. Wake is difficult to calculate because it doesn't use atandardized tests for admissions.

Stanford is larger and has higher admissions standards than some Ivys [sic] Ivies?
Northeastern has similarities as well but is much larger.

Therefore, I declare W&M a school without pier!

Well done, 78.

Well said Monarch in Chief. I think this poll is an absolute riot. I recall years ago while touring the Sistine chapel, there were a bunch of Wm And Mary students in there. I tried to converse with a couple of them and what struck me head on was their degree of narcissistic impairment. That's a polite way of way of saying; "My s... Is ice cream!". It was palpable. These people need a wake up. Meet your peers and come to grips with it. This is wild.

(12-23-2014 06:29 PM)SoCal Frank Wrote:  Well said Monarch in Chief. I think this poll is an absolute riot. I recall years ago while touring the Sistine chapel, there were a bunch of Wm And Mary students in there. I tried to converse with a couple of them and what struck me head on was their degree of narcissistic impairment. That's a polite way of way of saying; "My s... Is ice cream!". It was palpable. These people need a wake up. Meet your peers and come to grips with it. This is wild.

What a horrible memory.

I have no idea if you went to W&M but what had always struck me from my alum friends, classmates, etc., when compared to other academic universities, is their humility.

That is what separates to me W&M from UVA or any of the Ivies.

We have no peer, fellas. There are better schools and there are worse but no "peer." Maybe we need to define the word peer and go from there.

Actually, just looked up the system used to determine this. First of all, they noted that schools try to allign themselves with the better institutions so that explains the weird list in the O.P. (CNU, Morgan State, and Alabama A&M?...give me a break.)

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System asks each school to determine "comparison groups" or peers. The Page Rank Tool is used in calculation. The items below are straight from the website...

Finances
Enrollment
Graduation Rates
"And other..."

So, how do we compare to the schools listed in finances, enrollment, and graduation rates.

(12-23-2014 04:22 PM)Tribal Wrote:  

(12-23-2014 04:15 PM)tribe_pride Wrote:  

(12-23-2014 04:03 PM)Tribal Wrote:  Not a single school on those lists are peers. Wake is the closest but they're a private institution. There are no public universities similar to W&M...not elitest, just a fact.

So which colleges would you consider a peer of W&M? Don't say none because W&M is not completely unique.

I dunno, name another small public university with top academics. There are none.

Even UC-Davis has more than triple our enrollment. UVA and UNC-CH may be the closest...GT, Wake, Note Dame? Any of those seem like peers to our 7k public school in W'burg. Lehigh maybe?

JMU/Appy. ODU/VCU. Mason/Towson.

Lehigh is primarily an Engineering School and private, not state supported. W&M is a Liberal Arts University with no Engineering curriculum. Both schools are well respected academically. Not sure this survey measures much of anything.

I thought WM's endowment was more like 700 million? But it's impressive how competitive the college is academically despite the financial disadvantages.

And our bubble is oddly isolated.

When it comes to this type of thinking and discourse; Wm and Mary Is both odd and isolated, by design.
It's part of the schtick

I think the whole analysis seems off base.

Seems to me you would base some of this on the most common schools your student base applied. I remember reading several years ago that Dartmouth, Duke, UVA and Georgetown were the most common schools that our student base also applied for admission.

But even with the difficulty really pinpointing all this, I do think Miami and Wake are pretty damn close. Both have even constructed parts of their campuses to look like W&M (though it looks faux if you are familiar with the real thing). Also feel UNC and Delaware are very similar in some facets.

I found it funny that Richmond picked us - and we didn't pick them.

The simple answer is that UVa and UNC are our peers, and for whatever reason, W&M has allowed our peers to increase their enrollments and athletics profiles while W&M has stood still.

Since this is an athletics board, try this on for size ...

Hypothetical ... Every P5 and G5 conference invites W&M to join, and the Big East, A-10, SoCon, Patriot, and Ivy invite W&M to join.

I think that W&M would only consider the ACC (requires all sports upgrade), A-10 (requires hoops upgrade), Big East (requires hoops upgrade), and Ivy (requires all sports downgrade).

When it comes to "peers", that is a lot of variety.

(12-24-2014 12:28 PM)nj alum Wrote:  The simple answer is that UVa and UNC are our peers, and for whatever reason, W&M has allowed our peers to increase their enrollments and athletics profiles while W&M has stood still.

You say this like it is entirely negative. I for one am very happy that we have not ballooned enrollment. It would totally change the makeup of the college. Certainly we have to grow over time, but I think we are best served staying a "small" college.

(12-24-2014 12:50 PM)wml33t Wrote:  

(12-24-2014 12:28 PM)nj alum Wrote:  The simple answer is that UVa and UNC are our peers, and for whatever reason, W&M has allowed our peers to increase their enrollments and athletics profiles while W&M has stood still.

You say this like it is entirely negative. I for one am very happy that we have not ballooned enrollment. It would totally change the makeup of the college. Certainly we have to grow over time, but I think we are best served staying a "small" college.

I think it is entirely negative. I think W&M made a mistake in the 70's in not pursuing a spot in the ACC that would have allowed us to be in a league with Duke, Wake, UNC, and UVA, and eventually, VPI.

As a result, the school currently has no real peers ... a blessing and a curse.