All the top 20 schools and even others (surprisingly state flagships in search of OOS tuition or just better students) are heavily recruiting from all areas of the country, and with the competitive admissions at these schools, I would think some students are willing to leave their region to go to a selective or even elite school. This used to actually work as a strategy, and maybe sometimes still does, but I think the internet and other sources make it all more transparent … And if you only have 1500 slots and 50000 applicants, a few less applications from Chicagoland or the NE may be a relief.
The man on the street thing can also get a bit out of hand. You really can’t be elitist to everyone, most people are thrilled if their kids can go to a good state school for a reasonable cost and don’t really like it if you make fun of UC-Boulder (by the way, a beautiful campus with a stellar aerospace engineering program, just a bit costly OOS) or 3rd tier IS option. If they have a friend or friend-of-a-friend with a smart kid, they think whatever school they went to is a good school, especially if they do well in life afterwards.
Honestly, all the national universities and LACs that are ranked in USNWR are premier schools, and I would guess so are the regionals, although there it really does matter if you are in the region or not. To many those are all “elite”, but maybe not to everyone reading a thread that has NE as up-and-coming and trashes Brown and Cornell as being regionals.
I can’t imagine that the average Chicago student would be " ashamed to go to Brown".
My point in the above post is that people from small towns are not always ignorant. People from cities in the midwest are not necessarily ignorant either.
Sarcastic remark was directed at pizzagirl … not Brown. I don’t think too many MWers have not heard of Brown, Cornell or Dartmouth, but maybe they are not at the top of their “elite” school list, where as maybe UIUC is.
I agree that people are not rubes, certainly with the internet and fine resources such as CC, most people who would care about Eliteness can figure out what that means from their own viewpoints. From a northeast, mid-atlantic perspective, Rice, NW, etc are probably a bit more obscure than the Ivy League. Anyone that gets on College Board’s mailing list will quickly learn the merits of UChicago through all the expensive and frequent mailings (can too much mail make you less elite ?).
And, of course, schools can be either up-and-coming or down-and-less-elite, over years or decades of differing endowment values, trendiness, university management and advertising effectiveness, and maybe just old luck (if you can get a POTUS alum, that can’t hurt, but it’s 30-40 years since they left your school). I think Elite could be defined by some as “did a Kennedy go there” ? John Jr could have brought Brown into the top 10 for sure, if he had lived longer and passed the bar exam sooner.
Some interesting opinions…I think of elite schools as those who employers seek for their top employees. Some of this is regional, some is national. The only ranking that really matters is the one that helps the graduate get the jobs they entered the school for in the first place. Almost impossible to rate as it really depends upon the goal.
I have had the good fortune to live in many parts of this country. Pizzagirl is absolutely right on the regional point. People tend to skew toward their regional or ‘super-regional’ academic powerhouses. There will always be the Ivy types that are as famous for being historic monuments as they are for producing quality graduates. People know them for their age (see similar results with sports powerhouses as well).
State schools are really in a sense bi-polar. They are schools within schools. Parts of many flagship schools are filled with some of the most elite students. Texas and TAMU both have some pretty high stat students. If you took the top 2000 freshman from each of their classes and compared them with the freshman at the Ivies, you would have a hard time telling them apart (except perhaps for income). The same could be said for nearly every Big10 school and many other flagships as well. The difference is that those schools also educate many less elite students.
When we moved to Tennessee when S was starting college, people here were shocked that we would send him to Penn instead of to Univ of Tennessee (I still can’t call it “UT”, coming from Texas). They wondered if he was going there because of Joe Paterno! I repeatedly had to explain that it was not Penn State, but Penn, the Ivy League School. They weren’t impressed.
I’m not “trashing Brown and Cornell as being regionals.” They are perfectly fine schools and I’d be proud to have my kids attend either one. I am suggesting that prestige still has a regional component, that’s all.
I think the bigger thing is that there is a lot of focus on what other people think of as elite, but I submit that most everyday, average people don’t really care one way or the other whether a school is elite. Most people in this country are making college decisions based on cost, proximity to home, and familiarity. Elite is not the uber-goal of everyone. It’s of importance to me and mine, but I’m not everybody.
“I don’t think too many MWers have not heard of Brown, Cornell or Dartmouth, but maybe they are not at the top of their “elite” school list, where as maybe UIUC is.”
That answer (“do they know Brown, Cornell or Dartmouth?”) differs DRAMATICALLY if you’re living in Kenilworth or Winnetka or the Gold Coast (where the answer is - yes, of course!), versus if you live in, oh, let’s say Berwyn or the (non-Hyde Park / Kenwood) South Side of Chicago, versus if you live in a downscale rural area / farming community.
I might rephrase - I think perceptions are fueled both by socioeconomic status and regionality. My high school in Missouri had a higher sophistication level / more national aspirations than my kids’ high school in suburban Chicago. But my high school in Missouri was actually a more uniformly affluent population than my kids’ high school which is a mix of middle and upper middle.
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.
@Marian, WashU has been an academic/research powerhouse for a long time now. It may have been obscure outside its home region, but that was true of Brown for a long time as well, yet few people “in the know” would say that Brown isn’t elite.
As for the original schools mentioned, note that USC, NEU, and GWU are among the schools that game the USNews rankings most heavily. Thus, I tend to focus on outcomes, and by alumni achievements, USC, while in the same league as good publics like UCLA/UNC/UW-Madison, still isn’t at the Ivy/equivalent or near-Ivy level yet (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1682986-ivy-equivalents-p3.html). That said, USC is known for their alumni network and has some premier programs.
I think there is often an assumption that elite = “and therefore I aspire to it and genuflect to people who go or went there, and others will think highly of me if I go there.” I think there are a lot of people in this country for whom the word elite = “uppity, stuffy, for other people not for me, pretentious, boring, undesirable.”
And yes, what’s considered elite will depend on your social circle.
For instance, I consider NYU to be similar to UIUC in that both have certain programs/schools that would be considered elite by anyone in that field but the rest of the university to be more run-of-the-mill.
However, there are some circles (both in the States and abroad) where NYU is elevated to Ivy-level.
Plus, perceptions abroad may be very different from ones in the US.
Not mentioned in the article but Syracuse University did have a medical school at one time. In 1951 the State of New York acquired it and it is now SUNY Upstate Medical enter.
for me a university (not a college) should add a medical school to reach the highest prestige mark. it is not an easy process or cheap but it is needed (IMO) so for example I would argue that northeastern is ready and worthy of a medical school.
yes I know BU, Harvard, tufts already have med schools in boston. but NE has a right to the same things those schools have. (I bet they might even try and sue to stop them)