<p>goldenboy, CC does not represent most people. It represents high school students, and some college students for the most part. You will not see many experienced and seasoned adults posting here, and those that do will not weigh in on this matter. They may point out flaws, as I have, but they will not actually rank the top 10. That’s because there is no such thing. There isn’t a clear top 10, or even 10 universities that are more “deserving” of top 10 consideration. It all depends on whom you ask. If you survey the most educated Americans (like warblersrules), you would get one list of top universities (more than 10 would be included, and there would be no difference within that group of universities). If you survey corporate America you would get a different result, depending on the industry (pharma and biotech would be different from Petro/chemical, which in turn would be different from manufacturing, which would be different from media and advertising which in turn would be different from Finance and Consulting). </p>
<p>To the OP, the only post on this thread that truly answers your question is post #2. There is no such thing as a top 10 university. Obviously, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, MIT and Yale are clearly among the top 10, but other than those 5, you have a dozen or so universities that are truly exceptional. You really have to get very petty and delve into the insignificant and pretty superficial to differentiate between those universities, making tangential assumptions, in order to differentiate between those universities when attempting to establish which ones are better than the others.</p>