<ol>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Cal Tech</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Pomona</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>Harvey-Mudd</li>
<li>UCSD</li>
</ol>
<p>Stanford and Caltech are pretty much tied for prestige imo. Caltech’s main defect is it’s lacking stanford’s comparable humanities, but i’d say it makes up for that with it’s top-tier researchers, patents, and small student/faculty ratios.</p>
<p>EDIT: actually, i’m placing UCSD on this list. Tag or not, it’s still a fine and respected school and there’s no doubt that if the trend continues it will be on the level as UCLA and Berkeley probably within a decade. So it’s good to round it up at #8.</p>