<p>@John117,
of course I am talking about the LAYMAN prestige, since most of my friends and relatives are typical laymen. Otherwise, in terms of well-educated (or graduate) views, I would always put HSM+Berkeley as the top 4, and Y & P won’t be placed among the top 5. Layman prestige is pretty random, so any result is feasible.</p>
<p>john117, then I guess that the Bay area is different than Southern California for the popularity of CalTech among the laymen.</p>
<p>so seta, are you saying that if you go around the streets of San Francisco asking the laymen that work at the restaurants, retail stores and gas stations, which schools have smarter students, Stanford on the one hand, or Yale, Princeton and MIT on the other hand, that most of them would say “Stanford”?</p>
<p>think about it - these laymen aren’t your friends and relatives from SF that are attending college or have graduated from college - these are people mostly without a college degree.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>@JA,</p>
<p>Please read my posts carefully. I have said that “most of my friends and relatives are typical laymen”, because they do not attend college. </p>
<p>“are you saying that if you go around the streets of San Francisco asking the laymen that work at the restaurants, retail stores and gas stations, which schools have smarter students, Stanford on the one hand, or Yale, Princeton and MIT on the other hand, that most of them would say “Stanford”?”
In comparison to YPM, yes.</p>
<p>Laymen don’t know and don’t care about at which college other out-state, unknown, and smart ppl are attending. They just know where the smart students, in their kids’ HS, are heading to. So, do you really think most of the smart kids in Cali go to HYPM? If so, you must be unrealistic. And you are highly overrating YPM.</p>
<p>BTW, in terms of layman prestige, I think the result of Gallup’s survey is much much more powerful than your statements.</p>
<p>seta, ok we are getting someplace now…</p>
<p>do you think that the people that you talked to in the Streets of SF have never heard of Yale and Princeton?</p>
<p>also, are you affiliated with Stanford in any way or plan on applying to the school for admission?</p>
<p>Yes, they might hear of Yale and Princeton. And they are also much more familiar with UT Austin and U of Oklahoma. Do you really think laymen caring about academics?</p>
<p>H & S are my only dream schools, always. But, unfortunately, I was rejected and I am a UMich grad currently. However, this has nothing to do with my point. Same argument goes for Duke in NC, UT in TX,… name a few. Within a particular region, if there is a very prestigious institution, the power of so-called HYPSM will definitely be reduced dramatically, especially for laymen.</p>
<p>I think with the exception of Harvard, and perhaps MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale, virtually no university will be well known to the “layman”. Let me put it another way. If you ask a layman in Botson to name you the top 10 universities, he/she would most likely include the following schools:
Harvard
MIT
Boston College
Boston University
UMass
Brown
Yale
Northeastern
and MAYBE Princeton and Stanford</p>
<p>A layman in Texas would probably include:
Harvard
UT
TA&MU
Rice
SMU
TT
Oklahoma
Arkansas
and MAYBE MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale</p>
<p>A layman in Florida would probably include:
Harvard (yeah, those guys again)
Florida
FSU
Duke
UNC
UVa
Tennessee
Georgia
Wake Forest
and MAYBE MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale</p>
<p>A layman in Chicago would probably include:
Harvard (I am starting to see a trend here!)
Chicago
Northwestern
UIUC
Michigan
Notre Dame
Wisconsin
and MAYBE MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale</p>
<p>At a national level, should you run a survey covering millions of people at random, I doubt any university other than Harvard would be listed on a list of top universities by more than 10% of the total population.</p>
<p>Gallup was on to something (like WSJ with the Feeder school rating), but unfortunately, they never went beyond a very limited analysis.</p>
<p>so seta, now that you admitted that the SF layman has heard of Yale and Princeton, in what context do you think that the average layman has heard of Yale and Princeton?</p>
<ol>
<li>great football teams?</li>
<li>great basketball players?</li>
</ol>
<p>or</p>
<ol>
<li>the best and brightest students go there?</li>
</ol>
<p>JA, the average layman has probably heard of Yale because several presidents (Ford, GH Bush, Clinton and GW Bush) attended the school in the last four decades.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that only 40% of the population has college degrees JA…and of those, many attended small local universities or part time online programs.</p>
<p>seta, actually, currently about 2,800 students from California are attending as undergraduates at Stanford</p>
<p>do you know the Princeton, Yale and MIT figure combined?</p>
<p>It is about 1,800 California students</p>
<p>not much of a difference is there?</p>
<p>so this theory of yours below goes out the window</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Alexandre, how about Princeton?</p>
<p>how has the average layman heard about Princeton?</p>
<p>and how about MIT?</p>
<p>remember, we are comparing them to Stanford and how the average layman has heard of these schools, in response to seta that the SF average laymen has Stanford > (Princeton, Yale and MIT) for academic prestige</p>
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</p>
<p>seta, yes it has EXACTLY everything to do with what we are discussing here. As you researched and applied to Stanford and Harvard, as your favorite schools in the world, you communicated this with your family and friends. So therefore even though they are laymen, they are biased towards Stanford over (Princeton, Yale and MIT) because of what you communicated to them about Stanford…therefore your family and friends in the SF area, by definition, cannot be used as a sample of the typical layman for this discussion.</p>
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</p>
<p>Of the “Big 5”, Princeton is the least known among the layman. Harvard is Harvard, Stanford is the main power in the West and has an Athletic presence (plays in the Rose Bowl once in a while and makes it to the NCAA Basketball tourney), MIT has the unfortunate reputation of being the place where nerds and mad sciences go to school (this has been propagated by the media too) and Yale has produced 4 of the last 7 presidents.</p>
<p>Of course, Princeton is still better known than most other universities by the layman (Bruce Wayne/Batman did go there after all! hehe!), but that is not saying much.</p>
<p>“H & S are my only dream schools, always. But, unfortunately, I was rejected and I am a UMich grad currently.”</p>
<p>I knew I liked Seta! I will ignore the “unfortunately” bit though!</p>
<p>In terms of layman prestige, seta has it closer than you do JA.
H>S=Y>P=M
I know you’re a Princeton alum, but it seems you have a bit too much pride that blinds you from some things. Despite what you might think, Stanford has greater layman and international prestige than Princeton.</p>
<p>Stanford’s prestige is still largely regional – the West and Asia, at least in comparison to HYP.</p>
<p>JA, I really appreciate the time you spend on doing research.
so, why are you combining the number? YPM stands for 3 colleges not 1. On average, only 600 students attending one of YPM. Compared with 2800, do you really think the majority of laymen would put any one of YPM over S? Think about that, 2800 out of 4600 would say NO, only 600 out of 4600 would put P > S.</p>
<p>There are a lot of ways to get familiar with a particular college, not only sport or academics.</p>
<p>Seems to me that, your logic is: “If someone has ever heard of Y & P, for whatever reason, he must believe that the majority of talented students in US are attending Y & P!” You really overrate YPM. Except Harvard, the rest are all regional.</p>
<p>but Alexandre, what is Stanford known for among the laymen and what is Princeton and Yale known among the laymen?</p>
<p>Stanford is known among the laymen for Toby Gehrhart, Jim Plunkett, John Elway and Tiger Woods, as well as their Pac 10 sports.</p>
<p>Princeton is known among the laymen as a school where a lot of the smart kids go. How many of the laymen do you think have watched and heard of Princeton’s academic reputation in movies or series such as “The Prince of Bel Air” or “Risky Business” or “A Beautiful Mind” or “Doogie Howser” or “There’s Something About Mary” or “Family Ties” or “Numb3rs” or “The Cosby Show” or “Leatherheads”?</p>
<p>Remember, we are talking as to how the average Joe perceives these schools academically.</p>
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</p>
<p>kartrider, we are NOT talking about International prestige, so stop this nonsense…</p>
<p>we are talking about the average joe that works at the gas station or the local restaurant or paints houses.</p>
<p>next, I am also a Stanford Alumnus, so there is no reason to be biased in favor of Princeton.</p>
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</p>
<p>Alex, ha!..</p>
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