<p>don’t get me wrong, cornell is a great and prestigious institution with a lot of smart kids but, in comparison to pomona and berkeley, in terms of ACADEMIC prestige and reputation, doesn’t do as well. basically, while cornell is ivy, it’s the least of the ivies, while pomona is one of the best of the liberal arts colleges and berkeley is the best of the public universities. if you want to find a non-academic and non-professional job in iowa or kansas after you graduate and if you want to impress the locals who wouldn’t know where mexico is if given a map and think that canada is a european country, then yes, cornell will have better name recognition… but in academia, professional schools adcoms, and in elite circles… it’s a different story. as you can tell, i’m biased for the LACs…</p>
<p>For graduate school/ PhDs, heres another ranking I got from searching CC. </p>
<p>Academic field: ALL </p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database
Percentage of graduates receiving a doctorate degree. </p>
<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period
Note: Includes all NSF doctoral degrees inc. PhD, Divinity, etc., but not M.D. or Law. </p>
<p>1 California Institute of Technology 35.8%
2 Harvey Mudd College 24.7%
3 Swarthmore College 21.1%
4 Reed College 19.9%
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 18.3%
6 Carleton College 16.8%
7 Bryn Mawr College 15.8%
8 Oberlin College 15.7%
9 University of Chicago 15.3%
10 Yale University 14.5%
11 Princeton University 14.3%
12 Harvard University 14.3%
13 Grinnell College 14.1%
14 Haverford College 13.8%
15 Pomona College 13.8%
16 Rice University 13.1%
17 Williams College 12.7%
18 Amherst College 12.4%
19 Stanford University 11.4%
20 Kalamazoo College 11.3%</p>