Hey everyone! A thread like this has happened in the past, but I’m curious to hear from you again. Please rank the top 20-25 universities based on lay prestige in your geographic region.
Just take the latest football & basketball rankings…
@intparent Oh, ya because those are real accurate.
To many (most?) Americans the Sports illustrated rankings are all that matter.
I am not kidding. That is what the average person knows.
Okay, changing the thread a bit. How would people (that are familiar with most of these) in your area rank the following universities?
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Williams, Amherst, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Penn, Duke, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Northwestern, U Chicago, John’s Hopkins, Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory, WashU
Harvard,
Yale,
Princeton,
Stanford,
MIT,
Caltech,
Williams,
Amherst,
Cornell,
Columbia,
Dartmouth,
Brown,
Penn,
Duke,
Notre Dame,
Georgetown,
Northwestern,
U Chicago,
John’s Hopkins,
Rice, Vanderbilt,
Emory,
WashU
@TomSrOfBoston That’s the idea…Interesting
Harvard
Yale
Stanford
Duke
Princeton
University of Oklahoma
University of Tulsa
Oklahoma State University
All the other schools @MrAustere listed
Lay people will not recognize half the names on your list. And there is no apostrophe in “John’s”, so make sure you don’t put one in your essays for them. 
@intparent Smh autocorrect
Actually, among lay persons in New England, Tufts is more familiar than many of the schools you listed because it is the provider of a regional health insurance plan, it has a large dental school that supplies many of the region’s dentists, and professional sports are bigger than college sports.
San Francisco perspective here
Harvard/Stanford
Caltech
Yale/Princeton
Columbia/UChicago/MIT
Dartmouth/Penn
Williams/Amherst/Brown
Duke/Johns Hopkins
Cornell/Northwestern
WashU/Georgetown
Notre Dame
Rice, Vanderbilt,and Emory are not even on the radar out here, although they should be. UC Berkeley and UCLA would be ranked pretty high.
edit - I just realized you said “lay prestige.” My list is completely wrong, and was done based on the “San Francisco private high school parent and student interest” scale. Very different.
As far as prestige as understood by the local mailman out here, it would be
- Harvard
- Stanford
- UC Berkeley
- UCLA
- Some vague conception of what colleges make up the rest of the “Ivies League” but it would include Yale for sure and those other places rich kids go
- Duke, Notre Dame and Georgetown because of sports
- Never heard of any of the others
Stanford
Harvard(very close)
Princeton
Yale
MIT
The rest are all great schools. In my opinion these are the best five. In my region(southern California) Stanford is the gold standard!! I think Harvard is just as good really. Both are outstanding!!
I don’t know about “people in my area,” but I’ll go with how I would have ranked them before doing any research or hanging around College Confidential (and keep in mind that I live in Illinois and was born in Chicago, which may be obvious from the list):
Harvard
Yale
Chicago
Stanford
Princeton
Penn
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Vanderbilt
Dartmouth
Columbia
Cornell
MIT
Duke
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins
The ones I have no reaction to whatsoever: Caltech, Williams, Amherst, Brown, Rice, Emory
(picture about 95 blank lines here)
WashU
University of Texas at Austin
Rice
Everywhere else
@ThankYouforHelp - I generally agree with your San Francisco based ratings except I would argue that the “average” person here isn’t really aware of Williams, Amherst, or Brown, and they probably think that Northwestern and WashU are somewhere near Seattle. I also think that the tech-heavy bias in the area might put MIT above Yale and Princeton in perception. Rice might be on the radar.
@Otterma Yeah I realized that I misread the question. I edited my response.
My midwest town:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
Cornell
Dartmouth
Brown
Columbia
Notre Dame
Duke
Georgetown
Northwestern
Johns Hopkins
Vanderbilt
U Chicago
Amherst
Emory
Rice
WashU
Penn (would think this was Penn State)
Caltech
Williams
@suzy100 I’m from the Midwest too. I’m kinda surprised that Northwestern ranks so low seeing it’s in the Chicago area.