What would your list look like?
In the US, to Joe Public, who doesn’t post or read on CC…:
Harvard
Yale
Stanford
Notre Dame
Their state flagship or another nearby school
Five big football/basketball schools (like Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, UCLA…)
To people who follow colleges – universities, undergrad level, US:
- Harvard, Princeton
- MIT, Stanford, Yale
- Chicago, Columbia, Penn, Caltech, another Ivy
To people who follow colleges – universities, all levels (total university), US:
- Harvard
- MIT, Stanford
- Yale
- Princeton, Columbia, UChicago, Penn, Berkeley
- Caltech, Cornell, Duke, Northwestern…
…something like that
Some would put top LACs in there too for the undergrad ranking; I keep them separate.
Your average dude on the street:
- Harvard
- Yale
- Princeton
- Stanford
- USC
- Their state flagship school (In my case, GA Tech and UGA)
- Top elite schools that are within your region (in my case, Duke)
- MIT
- Talented college football teams (Bama, LSU, UCLA, Notre Dame, Fl. State, etc).
For undergrad applicants?
- Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford
- MIT
- UPenn/Columbia
- Duke/Vanderbilt/NU/
- Dartmouth/Brown/Cornell/Notre Dame/USC
- UMich/Berkeley/UCLA/Emory/UChicao
- Amherst/Williams/Swarthmore
- Rice
For people who have done extensive research on their college search will probably know all the top level schools mentioned, along with the ones that no one has really heard of (WashU, top level LACs that I didn’t mention, UVA, UNC, etc)
Now, these are in no way actually indicative of school quality, but just the general vibe that I’ve gotten from people.
People seem to forget Penn State.
The average person’s exposure to Penn State is either “state flagship,” “football team,” or “horrific scandal.”
Berkeley
Hmmm
For the average man on the street, I’d go with Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale for sheer prestige. I’d add Notre Dame, Duke, Michigan, Berkeley, Georgetown and maybe Michigan for having big time sports recognition combined with prestige. The final school would be their own state flagship, whatever state they are in.
no LACs make the list.
For educated / globally sophisticated
- Harvard, Stanford, 2.MIT, Berkeley,
- Princeton, UChicago , Columbia, Yale 4.Caltech, MIchigan, Penn
If you grow up watching a lot of old black and white movies, these are mentioned a lot: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Naval Academy, West Point, Notre Dame.
No LAC makes the list. Neither does Dartmouth, Brown, Vanderbilt, WashU, NU etc. Georgetown does make the list eventually as does Cornell.
UCLA
Agreed. UCLA Gets in there eventually.
my top 20 :
- Harvard
- Stanford, MIT
- Yale, Princeton
- Columbia, Penn, Caltech
- Berkeley (mainly due to grad school strength), UChicago
- Cornell, Brown
- Dartmouth, NW, Duke, Hopkins 17.UMich, Georgetown
- Rice 20.Vanderbilt,Tufts
When it comes to overall prestige and name recognition the biggest difference lies between HYPSM and the elite non-HYPSM schools.
Within the non-HYPSM elite schools there is a difference between say Columbia and Dartmouth because the former has many more top grad school, bigger research output and prominent alumni base (which are the main source of prestige), but the difference is smaller than the one between HYPSM vs non-HYPSM.
@Penn95 Penn is only known for Wharton. If you switch Penn and Caltech with Berkeley and UChicago, I would go with your list. The various world university rankings provide good guidance.
This time of year? Duke, Villanova, Kentucky, UCLA.
In the fall? Alabama, Ohio State, UMich, USC.
For academics? Stanford, Harvard, MIT.
Others that might end up on the average American’s list would probably be Berkeley, Columbia, Texas A&M, Florida State, and Georgetown.
I’d imagine far more people are familiar with universities known for sports and referenced frequently in pop culture than with universities known for academic strength. There’s also geographic bias; the UC schools probably have more worldwide name recognition than most of the ivy league simply by merit of being on the west coast and accepting a large number of international students.
@Chrchill not really, Penn is not only known for Wharton. (also known for finding the cure to multiple diseases, first medical school, first general purpose electronic computer etc just to name a few). Just like Chicago is not known just for its Econ department. Every school (except for Harvard and Stanford which are top across the board) has one flagship program. At Penn it is business, at Chicago it is econ, at MIT is engineering, at Yale is law, at Columbia is journalism, at Hopkins it is medicine etc. All of these schools however are highly ranked in multiple areas which is why they have good names.
That is my list, not everyone has to agree with it, and some other people above have given similar relative positions for Penn, Chicago, Berkley, Caltech, so I am not the only one with this view.
As I said above, the biggest difference in prestige lies in the HYPSM vs non-HYPSM group. The ordering in the non-HYPSM schools is definitely up for debate.
Personally I feel Columbia and Penn benefit i terms of name recognition over Chicago because they have on the whole similarly strong departments, but are ivies and thus are part of a historic group that effectively symbolizes elite higher ed, and also because they are associated with prestige behemoths like HYP through the Ivy League. The ivy League is a very strong brand both in the U.S. and even more so outside the U.S.
However some other person might not agree with this assessment, and that is fine.
Also this is about overall prestige and name recognition, not rankings. The world rankings routinely put Chicago above Yale, however there is no doubt that Yale has a much stronger name recognition than Chicago. Chicago is strong in departments that naturally produce a high volume of research papers, and therefore it benefits in most world rankings which are very research-focused.
Prestige is a combination of many things, specifically history, grad school strength and research output, university resources, wealth/prominence of alumni base.
@Chrchill you are so biased towards chicago lol
I agree with the idea that most Americans know about schools because of their athletic programs. University of Alabama, Ohio State, Duke and Clemson will be much more recognizable than Brown, Penn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Rice, etc.
U of Chicago: where the name recognition of a world-class university goes to die.