<p>How is Notre Dame viewed in the public eye in terms of prestige? I know it is ranked 18th with Vandy on usnews, but is its name compared to an on par with JHU, Georgetown, and Northwestern? Would you equate getting into Notre Dame as getting into a lower Ivy - Cornell, Brown?</p>
<p>Notre Dame is an excellent school. It would have to be considered among the best in the country. I think many people dwell on the numbers #1, #2 etc. I think if you’re in a top 25 school and it serves as preparation for further education or a final desination, you’ll be just fine. The question is whether it is a good fit for you. I personally think ND is a very special place. I’m not an alumn, nor have I ever attended a class there. But I am a Catholic and after having been on campus I can tell you it is special. Educationally it ranks among the top 25 so if it is a good fit for you I’d say give it a try.</p>
<p>My son was recruited by Notre Dame and we unoffical-visited this summer. Awesome school. Acquaintances were much impressed by the opportunity to possibly attend this college. I personally loved the school and thought it would be a great fit for my son. </p>
<p>He liked it very much as well, but was also recruited by his number 1 choice and has been accepted there.</p>
<p>It is easy enought to look up the stats for Notre Dame and any other college to which you wish to compare it. You can see the average test scores, the acceptance rates, the yields (number admitted who choose to come), and probably other data as well, like the acceptance rate for valedictorians, etc.</p>
<p>I don’t know how one would measure or gauge prestige beyond numbers such as these. But then I don’t think prestige is the most important thing in a college, or very important at all, so I don’t have a feel for the matter. If you measure prestige in terms of how many of the graduates make it into med school or whatever, you could find that out – but this is really a measure of the strength of the academic program and the students who were accepted and chose to attend the school.</p>
<p>Just my personal opinion, which you can reject at will – but I think employers and grad schools care about the strength of a college’s program in the area majored in and how the applicant did, not the overall prestige of the college.</p>
<p>As far as the US News ranking is concerned, some question how it is computed and whether colleges game the system to improve their ranks. There are other rankings of colleges that are different. And some people reject the notion of ranking colleges altogether.</p>
<p>Not what you asked, I know! </p>
<p>Actually thinking about it some more, the acceptance and yield rates may be a fairly good measure of prestige because the higher the perception of prestige, the more applicants and the more likely that successful ones will chose to attend. The US News and other rankings try to factor in measures of a school’s quality, so they go beyond the simple matter of public perception. </p>
<p>According to petersons.com, the acceptance rate for Notre Dame is 30%, for Cornell it is 29%, and for Brown it is 17%. I don’t think these figures are up-to-date, however, because I believe Brown last year was more like 14%. For comparison, they show Harvard as 10% and Princeton as 14%. Actually, I think about everyone’s figures went down last year because of the increased number of applicants, but I don’t know if the decrease was uniform. Sometimes colleges get “hot” and get a burst of applicants …</p>
<p>Back to the topic: What about the general perception of Notre Dame?</p>
<p>IMO, the general perception of Notre Dame is Football, Catholic, and Solid Academics.</p>
<p>I thought I was on topic 
Oh well …</p>
<p>How can anyone know what the “general perception” of a school is? They can only report their own perceptions, absent a public opinion poll. Do you know of any other way? Or maybe a poll is what you are trying for …</p>
<p>If so, personally and completely subjectively, I put Notre Dame around the level of the other colleges you mention, except for Brown.</p>
<p>cnp55, where did your son end up going? And what does he play? Because Notre Dame is a football school but the Big East is a major conference…</p>
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<p>Cornell as a recruited lacrosse athlete. Notre Dame is an up and coming lacrosse program with a great coach and they did get (arguably) the top lax attack recruit in the country for the Class of 2010, although there may be some football involved as well.</p>
<p>I think you may be asking about the public perception of Notre Dame among Americans. The people who know about colleges (like on CC) are not really representative of the public. The public knows about:</p>
<p>1) The ivies except for U of Pennsylvania. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Brown are names that people recognize. People have heard of Columbia and say or may not know that it is an ivy, but most people would just think that UPenn is a state university.</p>
<p>2) Any college with a big football or basketball team. Duke falls in this category. Duke is on a par with the ivies, but people know about it because of its football team. Most of the schools in this category are big state schools. Some like Michigan and Wisconsin also have excellent academic reputations.</p>
<p>3) One or two tech schools like MIT and Caltech.</p>
<p>4) A few LAC’s such as Vassar and Amherst. In this category, Vassar is probably the best known.</p>
<p>I really have to say that Notre Dame is famous for slightly different reasons. (Rutgers is also like this.) Everybody has heard of ND and everybody would say that it is a great school!!! It is mainly known among the general public because of the “Fighting Irish” and Knute Rockne. A well know movie was made about the team in the 1940’s. Certainly it still is known for sports. </p>
<p>Now in terms of academics, it is as great as said above. In terms of student body, it is somewhat a catholic school. There are a lot of catholic high schools in the US and a lot of these students go to colleges that have higher than normal catholic populations. Notre Dame is probably the best of this group although there are others like Georgetown.</p>
<p>Bottom line, the general public has a very favorable impression of ND while they have probably never even heard of Hopkins, Northwestern or Georgetown. I’m not sure whether this should matter very much.</p>
<p>Of all the top Catholic schools (BC, Georgetown, Notre Dame), Notre Dame is the most Catholic. Be aware of its very rural location - part of why football is king.</p>
<p>I feel bad for leaving out Stanford, UCLA and Berkeley. I probably need a new category named West Coast Schools. (The ivies are all in the Northeast.) I hope I haven’t offended anyone by leaving their college out, but I am just talking about what the general public knows. Except for schools with sports teams, I don’t think people could name that many colleges.</p>
<p>dufus3709,</p>
<p>I bet to differ. While you are aware of the general public not being representative of CC members, you seem to have inflated view of how much the general public knows (or cares). Let me tell you the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>I live in LA and many people in Los Angeles don’t even know CalTech, let alone “general public in the US”. Hard to believe but it’s true!</li>
<li>While many people in the northeast know about Brown/Dartmouth, they are not known in California.</li>
<li>In the upper midwest and Chicago area, Northwestern is definitely better known than ND for academics.</li>
</ol>
<p>You can’t generalize the entire US when the perception is so regional. Only Harvard has universal recognition across the entire nation.</p>
<p>Bottom line is the general public is full of people who don’t care about colleges (and therefore why should anyone here cares what they think?).</p>
<p>However, for those that are at least semi-well-educated and care somewhat about schools, I’d definitely put Hopkins and Northwestern above ND. ND scores only 3.9 or 4.0 (don’t remember exactly) on US News “peer assessment” whereas JHU and Northwestern has like 4.4-4.5. The difference of 0.4 or so may seem little but if one adds another 0.4 or 0.5 to Northwestern/JHU’s score, they will be the same as Harvard! JHU is known in the professional world (great medical school and great international relation programs). Northwestern is also similar for its great business school, journalism program, and theater/film programs (it’s known to many in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles). On the other hand, ND seems not to have any star academic program though it does have the football.</p>
<p>Well, I am speaking in terms of undergraduate education and not graduate program wise.</p>
<p>Notre Dame is like a Catholic Northwestern better than Vandy. Among Catholics probably best academics followed by Georgetown, Holy Cross,and in the last 15 years Boston College. ND alumni network rivals best of Ivies, Duke, and Stanford. Beautiful campus with very good football under new coach.</p>
<p>I agree that the general perception is regional, and I also think that it is based on age. Anyone who has seen Pat O’Brien as Knute Rockne tell Ronald Reagan to get out there and win one for the Gipper is much more familiar with ND than Northwestern or Hopkins. Actually, I have talked to a pre-med student who had already been waitlisted at Vanderbilt for med school who had never heard of Johns Hopkins. She was from California. When I told her it was a premier med school, she acted like I was obviously wrong and said that if it was a premier med school, then she wanted to know how come she had never heard of it. </p>
<p>I live in DC, and so I know about Catholic U, Howard, American U, Georgetown, and GWU. I don’t think it is fair to point out that Northwestern is better known than ND to people who live around Chicago.</p>
<p>I agree that the general public is much dumber than I indicated. There was an article in the Wash Post last week on a study showing that 1 in 20 people in the US are illiterate in English, although they may be literate in another language. My “general public” referred to the educated public who has been to college. I mean the type of thing where your grandmother is probably more impressive by you going to SMU than Northwestern (unless she lives around Chicago). I think I was particularly stretching the recognition factor in terms of Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Columbia and Caltech; but I think people are as likely to have heard of Yale, Princeton, and MIT as they are to have heard of Harvard. Forgetting about academic reputation and only considering the percent of people who have even heard of a college, do you think that Notre Dame is better or less known than Northwestern, Hopkins or Georgetown? However, in terms of academic reputation, I would put ND below Northwestern or Hopkins. That is only me. I don’t know why people would have a problem ranking colleges in terms of public perception, and not have a problem ranking them in terms of academics. Both issues are subjective and depend on who you talk to.</p>
<p>FightingIrish,</p>
<p>I did mean theater/journalism programs as undergrad programs. Anyway, the “general public” often don’t know the difference between them. </p>
<p>dufus3709,
I think its safe to say Northwestern has better academic reputation in Indiana. ND is not far from Chicago. If you mean % of people that have just heard of the name, then of course I agree with you that more have heard of ND mainly because of football, just like more people have heard of Nebraska and Oklahoma probably than Cornell.</p>
<p>Sam Lee:<br>
That was really my point. The OP seemed to want to know more about how the “public view” or “general perception”. I took that to mean that he/she wanted to know what Joe Blow knew about Notre Dame versus Northwestern, especially since he/she is from outside the US.</p>
<p>I don’t know real specifics about either Northwestern or Notre Dame. It seems that Notre Dame doesn’t come up on CC very often versus Northwestern. </p>
<p>I think there might be a typo in your post. NW is in Evanston IL, and Notre Dame is in Indiana.</p>
<p>dufus3709,</p>
<p>In terms of the “real specifics”, Northwestern has quite a bit more nationally renowned or ranked programs. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=124530[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=124530</a>
The general public may not know those programs just like you don’t know the real specifics, but they are known to those who know about colleges or those who are interested in those programs. That’s why NU comes up more often on CC.</p>
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<p>Doubtful. Basketball, certainly. :)</p>
<p>Notre Dame is a highly recognized school in the U.S. for several reasons. It’s the most-followed football team in the country, and the first and only one with a major network contract. While football has little to do with academics, it does lead to major name recognition even among non-college types.</p>
<p>Secondly, ND benefits from being the premier Catholic U in the country. Thought its religious affiliation is a less important part of its reputation today, it still benefits in this respect, particularly in older segments of the population.</p>
<p>Third, its academic reputation is strong among that segment of the population that actually has a clue about college academics.</p>
<p>Finally, its reputation is enhanced by an extremely loyal alumni group. ND is always in the top few colleges (along with Harvard and Princeton) for alumni contributions, and “Domers” are notoriously loyal to their alma mater.</p>
<p>In short, ND has high name recognition among the general population, and a good reputation among those familar with college academics.</p>