Princeton vs. MIT, which university is more prestigious?

It is! You are not allowed to ask questions for friends. Moderators will shut down the thread and state that your friend must create their own account to ask their questions.

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Can you link the part on TOS that says this? Asking for myself now.

I have never actually read the TOS so no idea (to any moderators reading this; I mean, what? Of course I have! Many times. I swear! I review them weekly as a refresher!). But I have observed many a thread get shut down with this explanation


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replied to you both via PM so as not to derail this thread.

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The difference is that unlike other countries, we have literally thousands of colleges here, and even the “top 100” by any measure are very, very good. So when you then consider the very tippy top - Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. - they are all very prestigious and famous.

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Mostly it doesn’t matter. However, it also varies depending upon your major.

For undergraduate study, there are hundreds of colleges and universities that are very good. MIT is very good. Princeton is very good. However, the strongest U.Mass graduate that I have met is just as good at their job as the strongest MIT graduate that I have met.

When you get to graduate school, and particularly for a doctorate, your major and your specialty within that major is going to matter a great deal. If you want to work on veterinary cancer, and specifically treatment of cancer in large animals, then you might want to skip both MIT and Princeton, and instead look at Colorado State University. If you want to focus on viticulture, then some other school might be a better choice (perhaps UC Davis?). For dance, you might prefer Julliard (if you can get accepted). For music, do you want jazz, classical, contemporary, or something else?

Working in high tech, you will tend to see a different range of “where this person graduated from” compared to working in medicine or biotech or some other field. There will be some overlap (eg, MIT is quite good for high tech and for biotech).

Perhaps another way to look at it is that there are so many very good universities in the US that which one stands out is going to depend upon what particular subject you want to study.

One other point: MIT is a “fit” school. It is very academically demanding. Some students love this. Some students hate this. Some students love this part of the time and hate this part of the time (I was in this last group). You need to want to do it. MIT is not a good fit for every very strong student.

In comparing MIT with Princeton, I would ask “which school is a better fit for you?”.

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For what it’s worth as a hiring manager, if I saw either MIT or Princeton on my desk I’d pretty much put them in the same “category.”

My categories are as follows:

Top 10 (which includes roughly 15 schools): Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, Northwestern, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, JHU, etc.

Top 20 (which includes the above plus like another 15 schools): includes schools like Cal, UCLA, G’Town, Michigan, etc.

Top 50 is like every top tier public (UCs, other flagship state schools like University of Washington, UConn, etc.)

Top 100 is solid schools that I’ve maybe heard of but can’t evaluate on individual merits.

Then there’s LACs, which I usually have to look up as I’m a podunk West Coaster who only knows of Pomona.

Ultimately, however, I couldn’t care less at this point in my career. Did you go to a reasonably good college and does your work seem to be of a high caliber? Great!

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Right. And wouldn’t caliber of work trump college name every time? It would for me.

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Adding to this
 I would have a different top 10, next 10, etc. list depending on the major. For example, the “top 20” CS colleges are different from the “top 20” political science colleges.

That’s fair-- in my work major rarely really matters. I hire generalists and tend not to care whether they majored in x or y. There’s no major that makes you good at the bulk of what I do.

I think if I were hiring for full-stack engineers perhaps I’d care more about hiring MIT/CMU/Caltech/Stanford, but my team is hodgepodge and I generally don’t even have time to look at a resume and parse by major.

But even then, I’ve seen PLENTY of folks who went to ostensibly great schools but just couldn’t do the work well because they were grade A dorks. Hiring sucks. So much of it is voodoo.

Right. And wouldn’t caliber of work trump college name every time? It would for me.

That and whether the people they’re going to work with vibe with them. I’ve had candidates I loved who just didn’t vibe with one or more key stakeholders and gotten shut down.

Even for more technical work, if you are going to be a major pain during standups or can’t take criticism gracefully during reviews, it often won’t matter if you’re #1 top technical grad of all time.

Being frank, even as someone with a master’s, hiring people with prestigious graduate degrees in their 20s can be challenging. Expectations are often way too high relative to the potential value add over a person with a few more years of experience but no graduate degree.

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Yes, we’re a very small team. Skills and ability to get along well with others are what we look for. Couldn’t care less where you got your degree from.

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Couldn’t care less where you got your degree from.

Woah there. USC exists.

(Kidding!)

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Not around here. We’re located in Berkeley :slight_smile:

(Our only prejudice is against Stanfurd.)

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I’m on the Peninsula. I have to deal with a few Trojans at my work. :melting_face:

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Stay in the East Coast, people

Both!!

I suppose if it’s STEM edge to MIT - but both.

This is pretty old at this point, but I am not aware of a more recent broad survey like this:

It appears MIT edged out Princeton.

I note I think this sort of information is unlikely to be useful for, say, college selection.

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I think “lay person” familiarity vs the strength of an institution is not the same thing.

Like some of the niche schools can be world famous in their field, but my grandmother may have never heard of it.

I think OP’s question is more of “name recognition” and “bragging right.” Can’t brag about something if the person you’re bragging to has never heard of it and therefore unimpressed.

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Yep. Most Americans know very little about most institutions of higher learning. Which is fine, it is not useful information to most of them–they are not applying to colleges, not hiring from colleges, why would they need to know that sort of information for practical purposes?

But I see a lot of kids online apparently assuming many normal people, meaning people not currently applying to these colleges themselves, will be impressed if they go to a “T10”/“T20” private or whatever. When in fact the truth is even once you get to like Duke, most people will at most know them as a basketball school. And if it is Penn, most people will wonder if you meant Penn State . . . .

So there are literally just a handful of private colleges that have any sort of real academic brand value among the US public. MIT and Princeton are right on the periphery of that, and right after that most people are going to see various sports colleges as more “famous”.

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