Two Texas schools — University of Texas (UT), in Austin and Rice University in Houston — have joined the ranks of Ivy League institutions, according to Forbes.

The two institutions are “attracting the smartest students and plaudits from employers”.

The development comes as a piece of great news for Indian international students who are enrolled in large numbers in these two Texas schools, especially after India surpassed China as top source of International graduate students recently, according to Open Doors Report.

For Forbes’ methodology, researchers removed the eight classic Ivy League institutions (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth and Cornell) as well as the “Ivy-plus yardstick”: Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University and the University of Chicago.

The Forbes’ researchers said the evaluation came as the traditional Ivy League institutions have “faced a barrage of complaints in recent years” related to admissions policies, grade inflations at several elite schools and university officials’ responses to on-campus protests regarding the Israel-Hamas War.

From there, Forbes evaluated schools with a minimum of 4,000 students to even out comparisons between smaller liberal arts schools and larger research universities. Forbes then analysed schools with high standardized test scores and a minimum of 50 percent of school applicants submitting them for admission considerations.

The researchers also used an admissions rate threshold of 20 percent or below for private institutions and 50 percent or below for public schools. After receiving a final list of 42 schools, Forbes spoke with hiring manager respondents about each one to see which schools’ students rose to the top of prospective employers’ priority lists.