Welcome to the Kudzu League!
Small, highly selective, private universities in the southeast, the Kudzu League have a lot in common with their Ivy League analogues.
These schools have broadly based academic communities with faculty that are engaged in high level scholarship, they focus on rigorous educational expectations, and they tend to attract an aggressive and competitive student body.
All but Emory have Div. I NCAA athletics, a high student athlete club sports participation rate, strong alumni networks, above average participation in the Greek systems, and emphasize a balanced college experience somewhat in contrast to the northern Doppelgängers.
Finally, though these schools are reasonably wealthy with large endowments and high alumni giving rates, they can still be somewhat expensive to attend. Recent efforts to address this inequity in access have helped, but the student body does still trend toward the upper range of the socio-economic scale. There are plenty of Mercedes, Land Rovers, and Porsches in the student parking lot and that kid with a name you recognize is not so rare. Curiously, Kudzu League schools are not typically Ivy school backups, they are in fact first choices with legacies, as well as law, business, medical school placement reputation being major choice drivers according to student polls.
Physics in a Kudzu League School
Emory Physics
Vandy Physics
Duke Physics
Georgetown Physics
Wake Forest Physics
A Few Physics Numbers...
Duke. Vandy. Emory. Georgetown. Wake
Faculty
Grad Students
(SCIMAGO) Ranking 1
(THE) Ranking 2
(Physics-schools.com)Ranking 3
(the Ranking Project) Ranking 4
66 30 26 25 30
114 76. 59. 40(EST). 40
32. 65 46 130 89
25 47. 62. 127. 110
47 52. 60. 61. 68
T3/12. T4/12 T5/12 T5/12 T5/12
Note: we only report rankings that go beyond simple reputational surveys. "Survey rankings" tend to scale with size age and type of subfield only, but not necessarily quality or educational outcomes. (AIP lists 204 programs in US)