<p>“Also most graduate school rankings are based on size and research output- hence why all rich universities dominate top graduate departments”</p>
<p>Perhaps a partial explanation, but far from complete. A key advantage of strong financial resources is the ability to hire and retain top-notch tenured faculty. This is one of Georgetown’s weaknesses.</p>
<p>^ Actually I thought of including that but decided it could be inferred anyways. Also from what I have seen, I dont know if top notch faculty contributes that much to graduate ranking especially if the department is small. Its all about size lol, I am not even talking about Georgetown but other private schools which do terrible in graduate rankings. For example, Yale does terrible in graduate engineering but the faculty there is superb but its department very very small</p>
<p>Harvard = Michigan of the East</p>
<p>^^^That’s what JFK said. Anything to get a vote!</p>
<p>^^You tell 'em. ;)</p>
<p>For undergrad degrees, from US perspective, rating prestige rather than quality:</p>
<p>In the US I think there is a clear break after the top 6: HYPS CT MIT. Next tier would include Duke, Chicago, Cornell, maybe Berkeley, maybe Columbia; then (moving on down) the top state universities mix in more with strong private schools.</p>
<p>Internationally, add Oxford and Cambridge at the top, and maybe Trinity College Dublin in the second tier; U. Peking, Sorbonne and ETH somewhere right up there too.</p>
<p>For overall prestige and quality, the top comprehensive universities in the US are:</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>For the sciences and technology: MIT and Caltech.</p>
<p>Berkeley and Michigan, though large state schools, have top graduate and professional programs. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt and Emory in the same league as Chicago? You gotta be kidding!!. Take just one measure of the academic power of these schools–their libraries. Chicago has one of the largest and best research libraries in the world. The holdings at Chicago equal those of Vanderbilt, Emory, and Georgetown combined.</p>
<p>Most overrated school: probably Duke. Quite a few of their graduate programs rank in the 20s or 30s.</p>
<p>^And that’s bad? Duke is an undergraduate focused institution. Its undergraduate program and its med school are what makes it famous, not its professional programs like in the case of schools like Berkeley and Michigan.</p>
<p>I skew heavily on overall institution prestige - you can’t confine a school’s reputation to its undergrad or grad or even a single department. The institution as a whole is scrutinized by the academic/hiring community…</p>
<p>Tier 1 Prestige (in order): Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Columbia/Chicago, Berkeley…</p>
<p>Tier 1.5 Prestige (not in order): Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, UPenn, Caltech (too niche), Michigan…</p>
<p>Tier 2 Prestige: Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Duke…</p>
<p>1 … 1.5 … 2? These distinctions are not nearly detailed enough.</p>
<p>Properly understood, prestige in higher education follows a hierarchy that looks something like this:
[Great</a> chain of being - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being]Great”>Great chain of being - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>For undergraduate prestige, look to USNews (score, not ranking):
Elite tier 1: HYP
Elite tier 2: Columbia, Stanford, Penn, MIT, Caltech, Dartmouth, Duke, UChicago, Northwestern…</p>
<p>For graduate prestige (minus professional schools), look to ARWU (again, score, not ranking).
Elite tier 1: Harvard
huge gap
Elite tier 2: Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, Caltech…</p>
<p>I don’t know if this is of any help, but out of the top universities I applied to I got into JHU, Cornell and dartmouth , but I got waitlisted for columbia and upenn. I choose to go to cornell for engineering.</p>
<p>Hmm…well, education is education. I’m sure you can get equally educated at either Harvard or Ohio state. But “prestige” is a different thing. I’d like to think that “prestige” is measured by the reaction you get by telling other people which college you’re affiliated with. </p>
<p>Order:
Tier1: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT
Tier2: Columbia, Caltech, UPenn, Duke, and UChicago, Dartmouth, Brown, and Cornell
Tier3: Northwestern</p>
<p>Pretty much any student from these universities get wows from anyone in a decent conversation. Morso from the Tier1 universities. But Tier2 does seem to do well.</p>
<p>Also, if this helps, my Principle in high school used to cite this article whenever he presented us info about colleges/high schools, etc.
<a href=“How to Get Into Harvard - WSJ”>How to Get Into Harvard - WSJ;
<p>He made it seem like any university mentioned in this article as a highly prestigious institution. He referred to these mentioned universities often, saying how they were the goal of many competitive prospective students.</p>
<p>Rather than worrying about prestige rankings, make sure the major your interested in is strong at the university you want to attend. Princeton’s prestige factor is high, but let’s face it… for engineering Cornell is the school to go to. The breadth of Cornell’s program exceeds Princeton’s.</p>
<p>I think MrPrince’s list is pretty much the most accurate one so far. I’m pretty sure tier2 universities will draw a wow in most conversations as well.</p>
<p>I agree with IvyPBear. For undergraduate, look to US News. For graduate (non professional), look to ARWU. However, for lay prestige (wow factor), look to the high school counselor rankings.</p>
<p>I really doubt a public school can match a comparable private school when it comes to global prestige.</p>
<p>“I really doubt a public school can match a comparable private school when it comes to global prestige.”</p>
<p>Then you would be wrong. Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, Wisconsin and others have more global prestige than many of their so called “comparable” private schools.</p>