I don't have advice, I just had to ask why you would say it's one of 6 (US news tie for 5th) and then narrow it down to two schools. Doesn't that defeat the purpose (protecting anonymity) of vaguely saying "Top 5"?
After seeing things like "top 35 school" or "public Ivy" I'm not even phased any more
Aim high!!!!
I've also seen people describe their schools ranking, mention some attributes, and eventually I realize that there aren't any colleges which match the description in that US News rank (plz don't judge for how much time I spent on CollegeConfidential learning basic attributes of different colleges okay).
Some dude wrote a book like 30 years ago about the best public schools in the country, and called them "public Ivies"
Someone made a list in 1985. I'd say UCLA, UCB, UMich, W&M, UVA, UNC-CH, but wait 5 minutes and someone will point out that Miami OH was on the list, and UWash is pretty great!! People just can't comprehend the quality of a college without comparing it to an athletic league consisting of 8 excellent but very different colleges.
To be fair, it's sort of a new phenomenon for schools elsewhere in the country to rival Ivies (with a few major exceptions like Stanford and MIT). You go back a couple decades and places like Edit: Northwestern and Vandy had 30-40% acceptance rates. Having ~20 places with top 1-2% SAT averages and acceptance rates in the teens or lower is new.
