UGA's Peers -- Not So Shared

Most universities identify "peer" and "aspirational" universities. For peer, it's schools much like yourself. For aspirational, it's schools you'd like to be. There's politics involved in these choices, of course. Pick a peer that makes you look good, pick an aspirational to argue for more resources to, as the academic cliche goes, "move to the next level."

For fun I looked at UGA's self-identified peer institutions, the ones we view much like ourselves, to see whether those schools also list us as their peers. See the table below. Only one school UGA lists as its peer -- LSU -- returns the favor by viewing UGA as its peer. Is it me, or is that kinda embarrassing? Even worse, far more of our "peer" schools list UF (5) than UGA (1). Hell, two of them list Tech.

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UGA Peer Schools	Lists UGA?
Iowa State	No
LSU	Yes
Michigan State	NA
North Carolina State	No
Ohio State	No
Arizona	No
California-Davis	NA
Florida	No
Iowa	No
Kentucky	No
Maryland	No
Missouri	No

NA = I couldn't find a list on their site.

I suspect there's a fun story in this somewhere, but then again I often think there is a story in the odd data I uncover. A number of other schools do list UGA as their peer (Tennessee, Mississippi State, etc.), but it's interesting (and, perhaps, humbling) that only one of our peers thinks enough of us to list us as their peer.