Okay,
I took a tour of Southwestern with my school about two years ago. My tour guide was excellent and she says that the sterotype came from a class either right about her, or two years above her. There was some legal case in court concerning a male with great numbers not getting in (I think it was about Law School though), so she said that during that year Southwestern played it safe and accepted people based more on numbers. She said like 70% of the class were males, and all alike so there class was always competitive and at each other's throats. That is how they got the reputation by that one class. However, after seeing how bad it got, they went back and looked at the applicants whole application instead of mainly numbers. So that had to be a class about eight years ago. I might be totally wrong because this is what a student told me, but this is why I believe UTSW has that cut-throat reputation, or at least that was how it was explained to me by someone who had seen that intensity. She said her class was nothing like that, and got along great!
