Part of American Atlas · The higher-education lens

Thirty-four schools.
An outsized share of the American story.

Thirty-four undergraduate institutions appear with extraordinary frequency among America's highest achievers. Seven ways into the schools, and one experience that goes beyond them.

MY SHOT ↗

Do I have a shot?

A complete-corpus experience beyond the schools: answer a few questions and see your path beside history's. Part of American Atlas.

Take your shot →
01Explore the Elite 34

Where the pattern lives.

Each dot is one of the 34, sized by how many people in the corpus started there. Hover to see a school's footprint; the ranking runs alongside.

1 – 5051 – 200201 – 500500+
02Compare Schools

Two schools, two shapes.

Similar size can hide entirely different signatures. Pick any two.

VS
03Choose an Outcome

Every form of achievement has its own door.

Pick a population and see the educational path that led there.

04The Overlap

The people who keep showing up.

On two or more lists
On three or more
On five lists
The five-list club · tap a name
People counted by name matching pending full identity review; treated as close estimates.
Honors that travel together
05Beyond the Elite 34

Remove the 34. Another map emerges.

Service academies, public flagships, a city college that carried a generation, and the liberal arts circuit.

06Time Machine

Is the gate opening?

Elite 34 share by cohort, for the nine populations with enough time depth to measure. Most series drift down toward the present.

Cohorts are measured against a fixed contemporary Elite 34 definition, so this describes the paths of each generation as recorded, not a causal trend. The corpus ends at the 2012-2018 collection.

07Find Your School

Is your school on the map?

795 institutions appear at least three times in the corpus. Search for yours.

Roughly 4,000 US institutions grant degrees. 2,239 distinct schools appear in the corpus at least once; the Elite 34 alone account for 40.2 percent of recorded undergraduate origins.