@dfbdfb I totally agree! Let’s get back on track. Interesting viewpoint by the way.
@Zinhead, you’d have to look at how many apply to both to determine selectivity. The U of C doesn’t have an engineering school (or journalism school or music school or communication school or education school) and is smaller in general (use to be much smaller) compared to NU.
New England:
Harvard, Yale, MIT
Princeton, Stanford
Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth, Williams
I’m gonna pose a question. Is Northwestern or Williams more prestigious and highly regarded in terms of grad schools and empolyers?
^ Depends on who and where. Likely the same everywhere (that has heard of Williams).
In any case, prestige is like beauty and in the eye of the beholder. That’s why using “prestige” as a factor in decision-making is foolhardy.
@PurpleTitan And so long as people have heard of Williams, what would that opinion be?
^ Didn’t I answer? Likely the same. Or same enough that it doesn’t matter and your individual achievements, skills, character, and nature will matter more.
In the real world, most people don’t really care where you went to school, so look at opportunities at various schools instead.
Yes, prestige is in the eye of the beholder. In the eye of Rhodes Scholarships, Williams has been doing better. From 1904-2016, Williams has 35 and Northwestern has 16. Williams has a much smaller undergraduate size, like 550 a year. Northwestern has an undergraduate size of about 2100 a year. Make no mistake, Northwestern is a very top school.
@prof2dad Intereating with the Rhodes Scholars.
@MrSamford2014 #69 True, Stanford will always be johnny-come-lately in age compared to H&Y because it’s 200-300 years younger. But its “silicon valley” roots go back nearly 80 years since HP’s founding in 1939, so that’s not so lately. And a $20+bn endowment is a fair amount of hay.
It’s worth noting, as this is about lay prestige, that the Princeton Review polls - both of parents and of students - have put Stanford #1 for four or five consecutive years. I have no idea how scientifically their polls are done, but it is what it is: the view of Joe Public, with PR claiming to have 10000+ respondents. http://www.princetonreview.com/press/college-hopes-worries-press-release
The jury’s out on this one.
New rankings just hot off the press from WSJ this time:
1 is Stanford
Paywalled
This is the same ranking, and apparently partly based on a survey using the feedback of 100,000+ students, and a handful of their own indicators. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/stanford-university-tops-us-college-ranking
@prof2dad, Williams students have done better, but at that level, it’s the characteristics of each individual that matters. The Rhodes committee isn’t going to be swayed by prestige.
And considering that almost no one at either Williams or NU will win a Rhodes, I’m not sure how much one scholarship competition matters.
Wow, the survey really seems to like LACs:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/liberal-arts-colleges-best-for-teaching-satisfaction
LACs are hard to beat unless you really want to go after professional sports facilities, root for your semi-professional college team, or an enormous social network of alums… size vs intimacy, horses for courses. either choice is good.
Harvard/Stanford/MIT
Yale/Princeton/Caltech
Columbia/Penn/Chicago
Duke
Brown/Dartmouth/Cornell/NW/Hopkins/Berkeley
If this was overall university prestige Berkeley would be higher imo but not if we look at just college.
@MrAustere @Boothie007 My experience has been that Penn non-wharton for Wall Street prestige is below Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton and Penn Wharton (and MIT, Caltech but not many grads from these schools go into Wall Street) but above Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke and of course Brown, Cornell, Noerthwestern. Also the actual opportunities for wall street recruiting you will get at Penn, even if you are not in Wharton, are better than at pretty much any non HYPSM school.
@Penn95 I work in buy-side and speak with recruiters. Wharton and Penn are looked at very differently - Penn (non-Wharton) obviously is excellent, but much closer to Cornell and Duke (and below Columbia and Dartmouth).
Also if you are talking about “lay” prestige, far many more people know Duke than Penn, so I’d place Penn in the tier with Duke.
This lay person doesn’t know which school is NU, since Nebraska and Nevada are the only single word states beginning with N, and I don’t think you are referring to those for this conversation. Google told me it was National University, and they know everything, right?