When does an up & coming university finally become “elite”?

50N40W
Wed, 26 Aug 2015 22:30:35 +0000

“Elite” is a very regional definition.

And that’s OK.

From somewhere in that vast area casually, and often derisively dismissed as “flyover country,”, pretty much everybody has heard of CalTech and MIT, and holds them in high regard. Stanford, locally, doesn’t quite hold the same cachet. Harvard and Yale? Thanks to the last several presidents, they’re often viewed as insular and somewhat disconnected from reality, but yeah, elite, although in a very different sense than MIT or Cal Tech. For instance, for many people H & Y aren’t the sort of places they’d actually encourage their own children to go. In fact, we did not encourage DD to apply, although BU, Rochester, or RPI probably would have been OK with us. We’re not the only ones.

There isn’t really a good way to quantify how good a school is, so much of elite-ness kind of boils down to a popularity contest. Not my thing, but if it works for others, I’m happy for them.