Association of American Universities adds 6 schools, including George Washington University

Founded in 1900, the AAU promotes research and defines a certain kind of prestige in academia. Its founders include Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities and the University of California at Berkeley.

Securing an invitation amounts to a signal that a university has arrived, in some way, on the national stage, especially in the intense competition for research funding. It can help a school recruit top faculty. It is a bragging point.

“It is important recognition that we have a significant level of achievement, both in education and research,” GWU President Mark S. Wrighton said. “It provides us opportunities to develop stronger partnerships to advance new knowledge. It’s also a stimulation, by the way, to keep up a very strong trajectory.”

Wrighton was alluding to the reality that membership is not a perpetual guarantee. Sometimes schools drop out of the group. Catholic University, for instance, was a founding member. But that D.C.-based university left the AAU in 2002.

Now GWU, the largest university in the District, is the city’s only AAU member. Georgetown University, also in the District, is highly regarded and usually outranks GWU on measures of prestige such as the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

But on metrics that AAU tracks, including breadth of scientific research, GWU appears to have outpaced Georgetown.