A friend of my husband chose HYP over Brown a few decades ago, and told my husband, “I wish I had had the courage to go to Brown.” My husband did turn down HYP for Brown. The point – it takes courage to select the school that is right for you, instead of choosing the school that public opinion may think is best.
Remember that the people who are successful in life are often not the ones who follow the lemmings off the cliff.
Take ownership of your choice. Be proud of your decision.
@prezbucky I totally agree that fit is WAY more important, but if we’re going to discuss relative prestige I think there CAN be SOME objectivity.
Sure – and that’s the fun of it, right? Trying to put schools in tiers based on the factors we deem most important.
There is some use to this in that the more we know (as an adult community) about schools, the more we are equipped to give kids the hard info and opinions they need to aid in their decision process.
Ummm… You do realize that prestigiosity isn’t like, a real thing, right?
i·ro·ny. ˈīrənē/ noun. 1. the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
@urbanslaughter, if you follow the link, you will see that “prestigiosity” is actually a ranking of desirability in the eyes of CC posters, esp. students desperately in love with a specific school. It’s satire 
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/irony-satire-sarcasm/ It’s so confusing, but it will be on the test.
@bonenz Yup. @listenmissy had it right with satire, while, ironically 
given that I added a definition, my usage was, shall we say, less correct.
@8bagels Duke more prestigious than Penn or Chicago, same level as Columbia hahaha, maybe in an alternate reality.
@oDikaiopolis it kind of is though. Prestige is determined to a big degree by the reach, success of the alumni network of a school and even more importantly from the strength of the graduate schools of a university and the research it produces ( which is the reason for a university to be talked in the news, the academic community, ranked highly etc). Penn is consistently ranked in the top 20 sometimes top 10 in pretty much all national and more importantly international ranking. Same cannot be said about Brown (or Duke or Dartmouth for that matter).
@prezbucky of course it augments it the way MIT s legendary engineering school augments MITs reputation. But since its engineering school is part of the university what is the point in separating the two? none really. same with Penn and Wharton.
In any case the widely accepted prestigiocity/desirability rankings based on national , international rankings, revealed preference of cross admits and yield is (ivy+ schools):
Tier 1
HYPSM (Caltech too is here but it is so niche and different that most people don’t compare it with the others)
Tier 2
Columbia, Penn, Chicago, Duke
Tier 3
Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell
Tier 1: overall has both incredible research and grad school power, great undergrad programs and huge prestige.
Tier 2: Have great research, grad school power (some even better than Tier 1 in some areas) which allow them to be highly ranked in national, international rankings and gain prestige, great departmental quality (super star professors etc) that spills over to undergrad so great/good undergrad programs BUT they lack the incredible prestige of tier 1.
Duke suffers a little bit more internationally relative to Penn, Columbia and Chicago because Columbia, Penn rely on the ivy league brand for a boost and Chicago because of its Econ department. The heavy lifting is done by HYP for the ivy brand (mostly Harvard internationally) but the other ivies benefit a lot by association.
Tier 3:
Dartmouth, Brown have great undergrad quality but relative lack of the research and grad school power that would put them in the map for most international rankings (lose a lot of prestige this way)
Cornell has relatively strong grad schools (but on the whole not as strong as tier 2) and manages to rank high enough in most rankings but loses a lot of prestige points for its undergraduate situation (too big, too few resources per students for an ivy -still obviously a lot by normal university standards tho, state subsidy for some of its schools, founded much later than the rest of the ivies, people love to pick on it for some reason…)
Also US News does matter a lot (it is the point of reference for the big part of the applicant base that is not very knowledgeable about top schools and also quite prestige-driven. The fact that Brown, Dartmouth, Crnell are left off the top 10 costs them quite a bit.
I think Northwestern and JHU belong up there in tier 3 (where I also have Duke). Otherwise, I agree with those tiers in terms of private university prestige/rep.
In terms of actual overall undergraduate program quality, all three of those tiers, and probably the next one (Vandy, ND, Georgetown, Rice, WUSTL, etc.), are probably really close.
I think Penn and Duke are tier 3, along with Northwestern and Johns Hopkins. Columbia and Chicago should belong in a tier of their own imo.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
42
Penn has been hard for me to categorize (aside from “outstanding school”…) in terms of tier, but again, I don’t think the difference between these mythical tiers is much, if anything, at this level.
Well, you can all delude yourselves that in the real world, people care about these supposed tiers as much as you think they do.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Since the past 2 pages have focused on defining irony/satire/sarcasm, and with different users deciding which schools go into which tier, I think we’ve exhausted the conversations, at least as far as the original question is concerned. Closing thread.