It is more nuanced. CS inhabits the space between math and engg. I think Princeton is likely to have stronger theory kids than UIUC and UIUC is likely to have the stronger engg kids than Princeton within CS.
In areas like Math and the Sciences, and the humanities,‘I would expect this — perhaps for different reasons for each of the aforementioned majors. A lot of the very strong Math crowd goes to MIT these days due to network effects. A small number goes to Harvard and Princeton by choice. I suspect Caltech gets the benefit doubt in some of the physical sciences. Penn is known to be pre professional and business inclined. I doubt the top math kids go to Penn at the undergrad level. I know people who transferred from GTech to Penn for CS, and then transferred out to Berkeley because they found penn inadequate
Prestige drives network effects which make HYPSM the top choice for many fields from the top kids at strong high schools. If they can afford it and are not in the donut hole. Engg and business are a different cup of tea of course.
I note I don’t disagree with this, but I think it gets into complex and often very personal tradeoffs. Like we often discuss here LACs versus prominent research universities, and I don’t think there is a universal answer to which provides the best academic experience for undergrads. I really think it depends on the individual kid, their intended curriculum, what they value most in academic experiences, and so on.
So maybe “flatter” isn’t an ideal expression of this. I just meant there isn’t an objective, well-defined, measurable hierarchy.
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Yes, very little in this area is concrete.
However, we can observe what was found in the Harvard litigation, and subsequent expansion of that work in the Chetty studies. What they found is that academic ratings were largely not making the difference at the margins, meaning in terms of who was enrolling at these colleges and who instead went to the next-most-selective colleges. Instead, it was a combination of non-academic hooks in some cases, and then subjective non-academic ratings in most other cases.
Of course these colleges have argued selecting for those hooks and non-academic qualities positively affects the overall student experience. Maybe! But what Chetty et al found is it definitely affected the socioeconomic distribution of the students, particularly at the very top of the distribution.
So for sure the very most selective private colleges have the most very wealthy students. If they are also higher “quality” students in other ways, it is mostly a matter of non-academic qualities.
I note in my experience, that parenthetical is exactly how professional careers work. By the time you are, say, a midcareer professional looking for a promotion, no one is giving you the benefit of the doubt based on where you went to college. It is all about what you have been demonstrating lately.
Even for next step positions, the competitive next step gatekeepers aren’t likely to just assume you are qualified based on where you matriculated. They will instead dig into the specifics of what you have actually been doing after starting college.
I do think there is something to be said for margin of error, however. Like, if you start off thinking you will major in one thing to lead to a certain career, and it doesn’t go so well, and you pivot to something else, then some next step gatekeepers may be somewhat more generous with that initial oopsy phase if you are at a highly selective college. But you still need to do well after pivoting to get past those gatekeepers in your new area.
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I think if you remove buzzwords like, “hierarchy”, “universal” and “best”, you are both actually saying the same thing.
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I think you are right!
My opinion only, but based on decades working in recruiting/talent management for mostly large, multinationals who hire new grads, mid-career, and senior/lateral folks.
Many employers view prestige through the lens of three dimensions- breadth, depth, and rigor. Some universities demonstrate all three, and even though no university is outstanding at absolutely everything, you don’t need to do a deep dive on a particular department to be reassured that overall, the graduates (all things being equal) have all three. Some universities have none of these, but even so, you will meet an outstanding graduate or two or 300 along the way which just goes to show- a superstar is a superstar. These are students who crafted their own academic path, took advantage of what the institution had to offer and then doubled and tripled down, built strong relationships with faculty and were first in line for fellowships and paid study abroad stipends and other “add-on’s” which made their education strong even at an overall “less than” institution. And then the vast majority of institutions in the US have one or two but not all three.
I will point out that state flagships do particularly well in the breadth department, which is why the cost-saving efforts to just chuck departments and programs are so upsetting for people who follow higher ed and care about education. I get that it’s not efficient to support 10 faculty members who teach in the Asian Studies department if only 12 students a year major in Asian Studies. But since Mandarin and Korean are likely to continue to be “strategic languages” for a long long time, sending out the signal “if you want to learn about Asia don’t come here” seems short-sighted to me. Just one example.
But if a kid ends up at a place with both depth and breadth, it should be a piece of cake to create their own rigor and to “present” themselves as someone who graduated from a U with all three. Even if your major doesn’t require an honors thesis- guess what- approach your favorite professor and ask “will you supervise my research so I can submit a senior thesis?” Even if your college doesn’t require foreign language fluency for an “International Business” major, you can still go ahead and become fluent in Russian or German or Spanish (Mexico is still one of the US’s largest trading partners).
Are there employers who don’t care at all? Of course. There are companies and industries and individual job functions where none of this matter. There is a huge and growing industry now of products and consultants who can help employers measure and evaluate “EQ” and not IQ. There are some roles where the ability to relate to other people is much more important than how quickly you can do a discounted cash flow analysis in three different currencies and then convert them back to Euros. Because AI is going to do that soon- better and faster than the best Finance grad from Wharton.
But the notion that “prestige” (not the guy at your local bagel store, but large corporate employers) is a fuzzy concept which is not based on some version of reality isn’t accurate in my experience. Every company is going to have a division president who graduated from the school of hard knocks and therefore says “bring me a fraternity president from rando state directional college who worked his way through delivering pizzas over a Princeton grad”. And that’s great. But even that division president isn’t pretending that the rando college is more “prestigious” than Princeton. It’s a statement that success in a particular role will be tied to grit, a thick skin, and the ability to work hard/function with no sleep, and relate to people vs. “book smarts”. Some jobs are like that. Others are not.
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Speaking as AustenNut, the award for my favorite reference in this thread goes to:
Additionally, I am thrilled that this is a community where references and allusions to Mr. Bennet (and any other literary characters) are assumed to be understood. Kudos!
And as pertains to this thread, I would expect someone who attended a prestigious university to at least have some awareness of P&P, even if they have not read it (though I highly recommend reading it).
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I am also an Austen nut, but I believe the reference to Mr. Bennet is misinterpreted in this case. I believe the line quoted is the author making a parallel to explain how these two ended up together. Mr. Bennet has a deep and not justified sense of his own superiority, which is in equal measure to Mrs. Bennet’s superficiality and flightiness. A well matched pair, in a book which delves into “what makes a good match”.
Bolded part is most relevant to the thread for those who want to skip the rest of the message.
Oh, @Blossom, you don’t want me to have any fun, do you 
?
To refresh everyone’s mind and to have the proper context, here is the original reference from @pa94306:
Mr. Bennet is an inferior spouse, parent, and financial planner with little desire to exert himself for his family (or their general society). Yet if he had a rewarding relationship with his wife, he likely would have put more effort into being a better spouse, parent, and financial planner, and he recognizes that as he warned Lizzy about marrying Darcy. Mr. Bennet also understands that as a male he was accorded more leniency in being respectable than a woman would who behaved in the same way.
But let me advise you to think better of it. I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband, unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about.” (Pride and Prejudice in chapter 59)
I think that @pa94306 draws a good parallel insofar as Mr. Bennet regrets why he chose his wife, just as some individuals end up regretting why they chose a particular college (whether it’s because of a change in intended major or selecting a school because of its prestige despite being an otherwise poor fit, per your Dartmouth example).
On second thought, maybe you did want me to have some fun with Austen this morning 
. Be that as it may, we should probably continue any further Austen discussion via PM.
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Yes please
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So, we’re all agreed? MIT and Cal Tech are the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the United States?
Julliard, Curtis et al.
West Point, Naval Academy, Air Force Academy.
Whatever college my kid is going to.
Whatever college my bosses kid is going to that I have to continually be impressed by. Even when that kid- who brags about never having read an actual book- makes Deans List and the Honor Society.
There- now you have a full list.
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I made an allowance for another category upthread for places that admit strictly on demonstrated excellence in the creative or performing arts.
I think the military academies are a useful addition because of how hard it is to get out of those places. But they recruit for D1 athletics, and believe you me I have known some athletes who attended that were not very impressive academically. In one case, it was a head scratcher and he made it one year before dropping out.
I take the others as tongue-in-cheek.
You should be on board with this. One of your kids attended MIT. You know what that place demands.
There is one thing related to this that I have wondered about.
I worked in high tech my entire career. I have worked with quite a few MIT graduates, and a large number of U.Mass graduates. The best of the U.Mass graduates were really, really excellent – as good as any coworkers from anywhere. U.Mass has about 5 times as many undergraduate students as MIT does.
I have wondered how the strongest 1/5 of the U.Mass undergraduate students in computer science compare with the CS students at MIT. I doubt that there would be all that much difference. The many coworkers who graduated from these two schools that I have worked with suggest that there would not be much difference.
I think that the excellent students are there are U.Mass, and at MIT. They may be there in similar quantity at both schools. At U.Mass they might be somewhat camouflaged by the much larger number of other still good but not quite as excellent students.
Why would a student go to U.Mass if their high school stats are competitive for MIT? They might not have gotten in. They might be in the “donut hole” where their parents make too much to qualify for need based aid but not enough to be comfortable being full pay at MIT. They might prefer to be in the top 1/5 of a large class rather than the bottom 1/2 of a smaller and more competitive class.
Perhaps this leaves U.Mass as “very good” but not “prestigious”.
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All of them are tongue in cheek.
This was my point about depth, breadth and rigor.
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Not in my book. My top five would be HYPMS. And given that many here have seen these letters together and know what they refer to, CalTech isn’t top 5. Sorry!
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I do agree that the Top X% of any good American university (e.g., Baylor, Tulane, UMass), is comparable to the average of MIT or Caltech or Harvard, etc. However, that “X%” probably varies quite a bit, and is probably difficult to measure.