<p>^agreed. I didn’t even know about Columbia until I went to a joint session with Duke, Columbia, Penn, and Stanford lol.</p>
<p>
Sometimes twice in the same sentence.</p>
<p>The “average” person does not have hiring authority.</p>
<p>The “average” person does not review your business plan prior to granting a loan.</p>
<p>The “average” person does not rule on law medical, or B-school admission.</p>
<p>The “average” person does not review research grant requests.</p>
<p>Who do you want to impress? If you are not a politician or marketing professional, forget Joe Sixpack</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, I’ll put it to you this way. One would think that if any profession would understand the pitfalls of relying on school prestige, it would be academia itself. Yet, paradoxically, academia is arguably the most elitist profession in the world when it comes to assessing worthiness. Academics usually list their education as one of the very first things on their CV’s, almost always before their list of publications or grant awards. I’ve also never known another profession in which people routinely peruse each other’s CV’s as much as they do. </p>
<p>As several Harvard PhD students and faculty said, one of the most appealing features of their program is that the Harvard brand name opens doors for invitations on the academic job market for job talks at the top schools. Granted, you still have to impress during the talk. But at least you got the job talk. New PhD’s from no-name schools usually won’t even get the talk invite at the top schools.</p>
<p>I know Polytechnique, it has world prestige at the graduate level but nobody takes their undergrad seriously outside of France. No French uni makes the top 15 imo, they’re too narrow and have very little global visibility. </p>
<p>Anyway, in order:</p>
<p>1) Harvard
2) Cambridge
3) Princeton
4) Yale
5) Columbia
6) Oxford
7) UC Berkeley
8) Stanford
9) MIT
10) Upenn
11) Cornell
12) Dartmouth
13) UChicago (in response to what others have said, UChicago>>> Vandy, come on… Vandy? UChicago is the Harvard of the Midwest, Vandy is at the same level as Emory or Tulane - good but not the top 15)
14) UCL
15) Imperial</p>
<p>15 top UNDERGRAD universities </p>
<p>1) Stanford
2) Princeton
3) Yale
4) Columbia
5) Upenn
6) Dartmouth
7) Brown
8) Duke Univ.
9) Univ. of Southern California
10) Univ. of California-Los Angeles
11) New York Univ.
12) Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
13) U-Chicago
14) Northwestern
15) Univ. of Notre Dame</p>
<p>
Amherst and Williams are not universities, but otherwise your list somewhat resembles my own.</p>
<p>
I use my parents to judge what the “average person” knows about colleges (both grew up in rural NC and didn’t attend college). Like almost everyone, they’ve heard of Yale and Princeton. Princeton gets less attention than Harvard or Yale, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find people who haven’t at least heard of Yale.</p>
<p>
Let’s not pick and choose fields. One could equally well say that Stanford engineers are more sought after than Duke engineers. </p>
<p>
A gap between Oxford and Cambridge? Nobody in the US, UK, or elsewhere considers the two anything but extremely close peers. In fact, Oxford arguably has more prestige in the US – for whatever reason, Cambridge simply does not appeal to most Americans. </p>
<p>
You can’t. The most objective (which PA is not, UCB!) method would be comparing RD yields of comparable universities, but in the end, prestige is really not something that can (or need) be quantified.</p>
<p>
Oh, it’ll keep going. This thread has had remarkable endurance. One of the nice things about a forum is that everyone has his or her own opinion. :D</p>
<p>Based on membership in US national academy of science (NAS).</p>
<p>1) Harvard (164 members)
2) Stanford (130)
2) Berkeley (130)
4) MIT (113)
5) Caltech (73)
5) Princeton (73)
7) UC San Diego (67)
8) Yale (59)
9) University of Washington (45)
10) Columbia (40)</p>
<p>In tiers of global academic prestige:</p>
<p>Tier 1:
Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford </p>
<p>Tier 1.1:
Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Columbia, UChicago </p>
<p>Tier 1.3:
Princeton, Cornell, Penn</p>
<p>Tier 1.5:
Todai, Imperial, UCL, McGill, Michigan, Duke, JHU, some others that I can’t name on top of my head.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is an actual quote by former Penn president, Judith Rodin. As far as I know, she does not post in CC under her real name…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It is very interesting that you had to go outside of a thread of 122 pages to find poignant examples of ■■■■■■■■ by representatives of other schools. The Duke-related examples are widely available on this page alone…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>HAHAHA. This Freudian slip caught my eye too:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or was it a slip???</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Most business and finance-oriented Stanford grads are too busy with entrepreneurship and/or venture capital to be involved with the dying and corrupt industry that has become i-banking…</p>
<p>What do you think is more prestigious? Founding your own company or helping someone else take it public??</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So you admit that you’re an average person…</p>
<p>FWIW, Harvard: Columbia :: Columbia: Duke</p>
<p>^Again, not really. If that were the case I wouldn’t have given Duke another look and wouldn’t have chosen Duke instead. They are peers - get over yourself.</p>
<p>And also, that’s not admitting that I’m an average person. I’m saying that as an educated student, even I was unaware of Columbia. FWIW, I was unaware of Duke as well. I only knew of Harvard, my parents’ alma maters, and (since I live 30 minutes away) Stanford before college apps.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So Harvard double-legacy status still wasn’t good enough, huh??</p>
<p>Lol, get a life son. I’m going to be having a blast this semester. I can’t wait to get back to Duke - choosing to go there was the best decision I’ve ever made in my lfe. Nothing you can say can or will change that, noninterestingguy.</p>
<p>And no, I don’t have legacy at Harvard. Harvard + my parents’ Alma maters + Stanford. Learn how to read.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Now, you didn’t exactly “choose,” did you?</p>
<p>seppuku > Duke</p>
<p>Harvard
Princeton/Yale
Stanford/Penn/Columbia/MIT
Dartmouth
Caltech
Brown
Duke
Cornell
JHU
Chicago
Northwestern</p>
<p>there was a HUGE debate about people ranking Michigan too high and it may be long gone but I’ll add a few facts</p>
<p>My great uncle went to Mich and eventually got a P.h.D. from U. Chicago and became a professor there
My grandfather went to Mich and became top level exec at Dow 30 company
Aunt went to Mich and started her own consulting business now located in Manhatten</p>
<p>I would say this is easily an agreeable compromise about Mich</p>
<p>It is a VERY large school. This means that though it has a great reputation, it can’t be as selective as other top schools. BUT, if the top 10% were taken from Mich or HYP I believe they would be the same, take the bottom 10% and you would definantly see the difference.</p>