Highly Selective Colleges in March Madness

Ivy Coach salutes the men of Northwestern University’s basketball team on their historic bid to March Madness.

Each and every March, we write about college basketball. And why? Because a university’s success in March Madness can have a major impact on the school’s admissions statistics the subsequent admissions cycle. Should a powerhouse basketball program go out in the first round, applications are unlikely to spike the next year as they would if the team advanced to the Final Four. A good, historic case study for this trend is of course Duke University, one of our nation’s most highly selective universities.

So which highly selective schools made it into the March Madness field this year? Well, there is reigning National Champion Villanova University, the #1 seed in the bracket. There’s the University of Virginia, University of Southern California, Duke University, Northwestern University (the university’s first bid — congratulations to the Wildcats and, of course, Julia Louis Dreyfus whose son is on the team!), Vanderbilt University, University of Notre Dame, Princeton University (the 2017 Ivy League champion after remaining undefeated in conference play!), Wake Forest University, University of California – Los Angeles, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Michigan. And, yes, we’re cherrypicking the most competitive of the batch for those folks that wish to make the cast that East Tennessee State University deserves a mention (it doesn’t as it’s not highly selective and we help students earn admission to highly selective schools).

Let’s go Eli and the USC Trojans! Fight on.

And regular readers of our college admissions blog know who we’ll be rooting for. While of course we’ll be pulling for all of the highly selective schools, it’s the University of Southern California that moves our hearts — and junior starting guard Elijah Stewart in particular. We were in attendance in North Carolina last year when the Trojans fell at the buzzer to Providence in the opening round. And which school should USC draw for the play-in game to the 2017 tourney? Providence. Let’s go Trojans! Let’s go Eli! Fight on.