<p>Pizzagirl, I don’t think you’re quite right there. If public opinion is so shaped by sports prowess, then why do Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT have such great public reputations? Why is the Ivy League and not the SEC considered the most elite group of schools? If prestige is SO regional, then why do people from California still think HYP are great schools?</p>
<p>People don’t pay that much attention to where Joe Q. Public got his MBA, but the cumulative effect builds up. People respect the universities they see favorably in the media. All that times that you read “Researchers at MIT discovered” add up and give you a favorable impression of MIT, and every time you hear about a successful person who went to Stanford, it incrementally increases your opinion of Stanford.</p>
<p>I’m not familiar with any work on colleges as such, but research in sociology and psychology have proved this over and over again. The more good things you hear about an institution/brand/person, the more you tend to like it. That’s so overwhelmingly intuitive, that I find it hard to believe I’m even saying it. “Liking” a college in that way translates into prestige for it. As a matter of fact, this even explains why prestige has regional components. People who live in Michigan hear a lot more about the accomplishments at the University of Michigan than people who live in Texas do, and vice versa.</p>
<p>SWHarborfan, the happiness rankings are already out there. As I said above, all that I’m trying to rank is prestige. I’m not saying that prestige should be the dominant factor in anyone’s college choice.</p>