UT Austin, Rice University join league of Ivy League Schools

The schools were evaluated with a minimum of 4,000 students to even out comparisons between smaller liberal arts schools and larger research universities.

Image source: 21K School

University of Texas (UT), in Austin and Rice University in Houston, - these two Texas schools have joined the ranks of Ivy League institutions.

This new development by Forbes comes as great news for Indian international students as Indians are enrolled in large numbers in these two Texas schools. Recently, Indian students surpassed China as the top source of International graduate students, as reported by Open Doors Report.

Researchers removed the "Ivy-plus yardstick": Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University and the University of Chicago and eight classic Ivy League institutions (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth and Cornell), as reported by Business Standard.

More details of Forbes' methodology

Forbes stated that the assessment came after the traditional Ivy League institutions have "faced a barrage of complaints in recent years" related to grade inflations, admissions policies at several elite schools and university officials' responses to on-campus protests regarding the Israel-Hamas War.

This time, Forbes researchers have also used an admissions rate threshold of 50% or below for public schools and 20% or below for private institutions. Forbes first received a final list of 42 schools and then it talked with hiring manager respondents about each one to see which schools' students have reached the top of prospective employers' priority lists.

According to the US News & World Report, Rice University has long been considered an Ivy League school of the South with an 8.7%. Half the applicants admitted to Rice who submitted test scores reported SAT scores between 1490 and 1570, or ACT scores between 34 and 36.

UT Austin is having an acceptance rate of 31% and an average ACT score between 29 and 34. The university is ranked 32 on US News & World Report's list of Best National Universities.

List of Forbes' new Ivy League Schools

Private schools: Boston College, Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University, Rice University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Notre Dame, University of Southern California, University of Maryland-College Park.

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Vanderbilt University.

Public Schools: Binghamton University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Florida, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Texas-Austin, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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