<p>During my days–1980s, back in China. What I knew about the US colleges:</p>
<p>MIT – because some top scientists graduated from there, no clues what MIT was.</p>
<p>Harvard – just the name, don’t remember why.</p>
<p>They were about equal, like two top Chinese schools, Qinghua and Beida, one was in engineering, the other was in science. It was a matter of personal taste.</p>
<p>Yale – not very much, maybe very popular recently because of the Bushes. the first Chinese student graduated from there. Big deal.</p>
<p>Stanford – The first when I heard it was when I was in a conference, they invited a guest speaker who got Ph.D. from Stanford. Maybe more popular recently due to the google guys.</p>
<p>UC Berkeley – as what the Chinese called it. Don’t remember why.</p>
<p>Michigan, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Chicago – once again, don’t remember reasons why I knew of them, but one thing was clear, I had no clues what those schools were.</p>
<p>Princeton – often was credited with those people worked at IAS. It was hard to spell and pronounce in Chinese.</p>