The University of Austin (UATX) set out to prove that a new institution, unburdened by legacy preferences and ideological orthodoxies, could compete for top academic talent. But despite national attention and a distinctive mission, UATX has struggled to attract top-achieving students, many of whom continue to gravitate toward established Ivy and Ivy-Plus institutions. In admissions, however, momentum matters: the easiest way to recruit high-achieving students is to have already enrolled them. UATX cannot yet rely on that dynamic, because its current student body is, on average, weaker on standard academic metrics than those at the top 30 institutions—not just Harvard and Williams, but also Cornell and Colby. (Read “SAT Scores Show UATX Is Not Attracting Top Academic Talent”).

UATX would like to be able to say something like, “Our average SAT score is higher than Stanford’s.” If it could honestly make that claim, many students might choose it over Stanford. Until then, persuading a student with a 1550 SAT score to attend a school with lower-performing peers will be a hard sell—making targeted recruiting, rather than broad national outreach, the obvious place to start.

Fortunately, many students with SAT scores of 1500+ are not admitted to Yale and would consider UATX if given a compelling reason. The problem is twofold. First, those students are dispersed all over the country, so they are hard to contact. Second, UATX is not as unique as it often pretends to be. The University of Chicago values academic freedom just as much. The California Institute of Technology cares just as little about collegiate athletics. Most elite schools offer just as many Great Books courses as any interested students might want.

UATX should focus its recruiting on schools with a critical mass of high-scoring students and engage those students directly. Most U.S. high schools produce only a handful of exceptional students and are therefore inefficient recruiting targets. The schools that reliably generate large numbers of elite students fall into three categories—private schools, exam schools, and public schools in highly educated communities—and they are disproportionately concentrated in the Northeast, particularly around Boston and New York.

Pick a list of excellent schools, both public and private. The public ones will be exam schools like Boston Latin and Stuyvesant, or located in highly educated towns like Lexington or Scarsdale. The private schools will be the region’s famous “independent” schools, such as Andover and Groton. These schools have many students who score well on exams, often scoring above 1500.

UATX needs one admissions officer to establish relationships with each of the 50 or so schools.

She would concede that, at least in the next few years, UATX does not expect to win very many head-to-head battles against Harvard. Indeed, UATX will have difficulty attracting students in the top 25 percent of their class from these high schools. The sweet spot is the second 25 percent. These are students who perform well on exams, often with SAT scores of 1500+. Given a choice between Princeton and UATX, they would choose the former. But because universities like Princeton don’t want 90 percent of their students to come from high schools like Andover, they mostly reject students outside the top 25 percent. These rejected-from-Princeton students might be persuaded to choose UATX over Vanderbilt.

College counselors at elite schools face the daunting task of managing the expectations of high-achieving students outside the top 25 percent. UATX offers a compelling alternative, allowing these families to view their final placement as a deliberate intellectual choice rather than a consolation prize.

Once UATX reports that its students’ average SAT score exceeds Harvard’s, it can cast a wider recruiting net. Until then, it should go where the high-achieving students are.