College Rankings On Lay Prestige

I think one thing that leads to the broad range of rankings for Chicago is that there is a perception that U of C is a much better place for graduate school than it is for undergrad.

The undergrad there has somewhat limited programs, and the “Life of the mind” / “where fun goes to die” approach is unappealing to many top students. They also have a reputation for sweeping up students with low grades and high test scores that would not be strong candidates for many top schools. Perhaps this is part of the reason they don’t publish a CDS.

In contrast, the U of C graduate schools do not have that reputation at all. Everyone knows they are the real deal.

@moooop,

I live in the Boston area, where most people know that the average Harvard student could not locate Harvard on a map.

The problem can be traced back to 1948 when Harvard eliminated Geography from it’s curriculum due to a “personality clash”

http://geography.about.com/od/historyofgeography/a/Geography-At-Harvard.htm

The comments after this relatively recent article in the Harvard Crimson contain a debate over whether or not Harvard is on the same side of the river as MIT (which is only two miles away)…

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/2/6/seas-move-allston-campus/?page=2

@MurphyBrown, you’re making assumptions. Nowhere did I say that I have kids who are applying to colleges now.

As for grad school, no the gap isn’t as big as you think it is, either. Among b-schools, both Booth and Kellogg are M7. Chicago has a slight edge in law (T6 vs. T14). In NYC, while CBS has a slight edge over Stern, in law, NYU actually has the edge over Columbia. With PhD programs, it really depends on the field. All 4 schools have some masters programs that really aren’t hard to get in to at all.

When it comes to undergrad, regardless of what the undergraduate reputations are, there isn’t the gap that you think there is. The U of C does better in terms of grads getting PhDs but NU does far better in terms of alums getting in to elite b-schools.

@MurphyBrown, times change. These days, in law, YHS are at the top (really, it’s more Y . . . . HS), then CCN (so I was wrong; Columbia is on the same tier as NYU). The rest of the T14 here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_United_States

In business, it’s the M7:
HBS & Stanford
Wharton
Booth, CBS, Sloan, Kellogg
Then
Tuck, Haas, Stern, Yale SOM, Ross (, Duke, UVa, UCLA, Cornell)

This thread has quickly–and inevitably–devolved from a consideration of “lay prestige” to one of “CC prestige.”

In fact, it’s quite unrealistic to imagine that the average American would make, for example, subtle distinctions between the the undergraduate prestige of Wharton and that of the other (i.e., the “non-Wharton”) schools of Penn. It would be closer to the truth to say that our American Every[wo]man would equate Penn with Penn State and would regard “Wharton” as the protagonist of the animated classic “Wharton Hears a Who.”

I agree with others here who have held that lay prestige in the US is largely regional. To the extent that we can speak of national lay prestige, the main contenders are Harvard and Yale (not Stanford, a johnny-come-lately upstart that has made hay from its Silicon Valley connections), followed by the traditional powerhouse NCAA programs in football (and, to a lesser extent, basketball).

For the enduring Harvard + Yale sojourn at the top of the lay prestige totem pole, we can thank–in addition to the roster of American presidents and Supreme Court justices–Thurston Howell III of “Gilligan’s Island,” whose praise of the former at the expense of the latter (“He must be a Yale man . . .” was the ultimate put-down) will, thanks to syndication, reverberate across America family rooms for decades to come, influencing impressionable hearts and minds.

@MrSamford2014, Stanford is also a football power these days.

OK. This is going to make me come off as elitist, but …

Whenever somebody would quote, what the “American people want, or think, or prioritize, or …” to Bill Maher, here is what he says:

Excuse me, but the American people are stupid

Here are a few funny videos on this topic from his show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fys3MsKMpms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6qIoMjfECo

So… Lay Prestige?.. Lol…

It is only elitist if you assume you are not American

Ya that’s a really interesting point of view @CollegeAngst

@Mastadon

Can you please expand on that a little bit, not sure I understand

Don’t try to mess with me. Everybody knows that Auburn is in . . .

Alabama? Really? GrumblebumblerumblewouldasworeAuburnwasinTexas . . .

I’ve never even heard of Auburn tbh @moooop @poblob14

What percent of Americans do you think can tell you what city Auburn University is in? How about Princeton University? UCLA?

It is a sad state of affairs. lol

Not sure it means much. I can tell you where scores, probably hundreds, of colleges are located. But I can’t chance the oil in my car.

It’s a matter of priorities. Why should the average American give a **** about where Auburn University or Princeton University is located? It has no impact on their lives.

@thankyouforhelp “It’s a matter of priorities. Why should the average American give a **** about where Auburn University or Princeton University is located? It has no impact on their lives.”

I think you are taking my post seriously. I was not trying to make a serious point.

It was intended to be nerdily amusing because the city where each one are located is in the name of the school. Auburn is in the city of Auburn, Princeton is in the city of Princeton, and UCLA is in LA. Similar to asking what state the University of Michigan is in. Clearly it was a failed attempt at humor. Sorry about that.

Whoops. Ok, I’m embarrassed.

@ThankyouforHelp No reason to be embarrassed. You just forgot the level of nerds you were dealing with on cc:. lol If I had been serious, your reply was completely understandable. :slight_smile:

@collegeangst,

My comment was based on the rules of logic:

If you make the statement “American people are stupid” and you are an American, then you are calling yourself stupid, along with the rest of us. That does not sound elitist, it sounds like self-effacing humor…

I think the original idea for the thread is interesting, so to try to move fully back to it, here’s the view I get from talking with students and other parents in Alaska:

Top tier: University of Washington

Top tier, among the few who are considering hypercompetitive colleges: Stanford

Top tier, among the ever fewer who prefer LACs: Reed

Next tier: Oregon, Oregon State, Arizona State, USC, MIT and Harvey Mudd and Caltech for the engineering- and CS-minded

The Ivies (and, to a lesser extent, Rice and maybe Vanderbilt) are probably somewhere around this slot, or even higher, but they don’t actually enter into the conversation much at all, really. Some of the women’s colleges—Smith, Mt Holyoke, Mills—probably fit here, too, though that’s only a very small slice of the population looking at them, as well.

Next tier: Western Washington, Hawai’i, maybe Pacific Lutheran (there’s a decent alum presence here, despite its small size), maybe the big Texas publics, Minnesota, Idaho, Idaho State, maybe Montana State

All that said, though, our local open-access colleges (which is effectively all we have in state—our three publics and one private show up as non- or minimally competitive in all the college guides) have phenomenal yield rates—basically, most Alaskans, if they’re going to college, are going to one of those despite their lack of prestigiosity, even locally.

@PurpleTitan and @MurphyBrown -

As for prestige, they are probably very similar in the Chicago region but they do not attract the same kind of student. NU is much more pre-professional/business oriented, attracting kids who have a firm grasp of what they want to do and how they want to go about doing it. UChicago’s “life of the mind” seems to be a pseudonym for a kid who doesn’t have professional aspirations coming out of high school.

UChicago is also much more selective. Our high school regularly places 15 students at NU per year. At UChicago, it is a small handful at best.