<p>Yes and no - it really depends on who you are talking to and what you mean by “public awareness.” That also depends on the place you’re in, in terms of geography, too. If you’re looking for a job on the East Coast, particularly in the DC-Baltimore metropolitan area and the Northeast, Johns Hopkins will be very recognizable. If you’re trying to find a job out on the West Coast with small regional corporations, it might be less recognizable (and in fact, the employers out there may not put it in the top 10 - it may value the UCs, the Claremont colleges, and Stanford and USC more). It also depends on the field. If you’re going into healthcare, everyone will have heard of Johns Hopkins and it’ll be highly valued, since JHU has one of the oldest and best hospital systems in the country.</p>
<p>I don’t know if people generally organize the schools into hardcore numbers like that - delineating top 10, top 25, etc - when they are thinking about schools quickly. They know that they recognize some schools and that some are better than others. I think most people would put JHU in the same general category as the other schools you listed, although they may not be able to immediately come up with a numerical system for them. I think that in certain parts of the country the other schools probably have more name recognition (Dartmouth most certainly, and likely also Duke and Northwestern).</p>