@Boothie007 I don’t agree with Penn below Columbia or Chicago but anyway these things can be subjective at such a fine level of distinction.
I d say the tiers of elite schools are more like:
Tier 1:
HYPSM (Caltech)
Tier 2:
(Caltech),Columbia, Penn, Chicago, (Duke)
Tier 3:
(Duke), Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Northwestern, (Hopkins)
But anyway @allima the point here to be made is that prestige as a consideration is not super important when looking at he top 10-15 schools to begin with and becomes less important when you look at the Columbia, Penn, Chicago tier compared to the tier below. If you were looking at say Harvard vs Brown of course the prestige differential is much bigger. At the end of the day there are more important considerations for the Brown vs Chicago or Briwn vs Penn choice than prestige.