Colleges with true "name recognition"

College Search & Selection
1

A lot of us on CC are college aficionados that know the names of all top 50 universities and LACs and what they specialize in and how they’re ranked, etc.

But how many random strangers would be impressed, for example, by someone saying they went to Washington University in St. Louis or Tufts or Wake Forest, etc? We on CC know the reputation of these schools, but when it comes to the average person’s perception, what colleges do you think truly have wide-spread name recognition?

For example, if the average parent saw an ad for tutoring and the person had a degree from ___, they’d go: “Whoa, he went THERE? He must really be worth the $300 an hour!”

OBVIOUSLY, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT have immediate name recognition. I’d probably add UC Berkeley and Columbia too.

But beyond those?

These are the ones that I personally think are contenders: Johns Hopkins, Duke, Notre Dame, Brown, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Cornell and -maybe-: USC, UCLA, and Carnegie Mellon

I don’t think any LAC would be well-known by the average person, except maybe Vassar.

Of course, some are well-known in their respective region, but I’m talking nation-wide.

What do you guys think?

2

Average person probably only knows the names of the sports powerhouses.

3

^ Agreed. The average person thinks Penn is the Philadelphia campus of Penn State.

4

:))

Okay, how about the average person that’s not interested in college sports? Or that has some level of awareness about colleges but not to the extent of us on CC?

5

“But how many random strangers would be impressed”

Why worry about what random strangers and the average person knows and thinks, anyway?

Employers, grad schools, those who know what a good education is do know the names. Not to sound elitist but I worry very little about what the average person thinks of my family’s choice in higher education.

6

Oh, I’m not personally worried or anything. I go to USC and it’s a very recognizable name in California at least! :stuck_out_tongue: I was just curious because I was thinking about how so many of the top colleges on CC are names that most people have never even heard of.

7

USNWR takes care of the ordinary, average folks. :wink:

8

Aside from a handful or two, it’s very regional. Even USC, outside the region, isn’t known well and if you used the initials in the south, many would think South Carolina.

Your average person knows very little about US News rankings. If you are in the grocery store and say many top 25 university or LAC names to someone you vaguely know who wants to know where your kids are going, most will result in a blank look.

9

@Flambeau In the real world, most people are just getting on with life and don’t care where you went. Your work will speak for itself.

10

There are plenty of top (or ish) schools that have only regional reputations. So be it.

11

I guess you guys are reading way too much into this thread…

I never said I was worried about it myself. I was just curious to see what people think.

12

I think we’ve pretty much said it.

  1. There are very few schools with widespread recognition.
  2. Many people know schools by their sports teams not academic reputation.
  3. It's very much regional.
  4. It doesn't matter.

:slight_smile:

13

Yup, that’s what we think.

14

2 I feel a little left out. I never, not one time went to a college football game or basketball game or watched one on TV. It never occurred to me to go. And I don't know anything about college sports.

I know soccer because we live it now.

15

I’ve been a long term soccer mom, too, @gearmom. But we’re not “average”. My preferred football is what the rest of the world calls football/futbol. :slight_smile:

16

^My youngest is accidentally on three soccer teams this year with futsal additionally in the winter. When my H and all 3 boys play the laundry is insane.

17

USC is one of the most well-known universities in the country, but mostly for football rather than academics. It’s similar to the way people know Notre Dame. When I was a kid growing up in Ohio, USC was the second most despised football rival of Ohio State, after Michigan.

It is true that if you go to the Southeast, people refer to South Carolina as USC.

18

I remember just after graduating high school, someone thought that “MIT” was a local trade school where you essentially learn how to fix TV sets and other electronics (at the time there was such a school near where I lived).

I think that @gearmom said it best: “In the real world, most people are just getting on with life and don’t care where you went. Your work will speak for itself.”

19

The proverbial “average person” has probably heard of

  1. Harvard, Yale and [perhaps] Princeton,
  2. the major sports powerhouses, which includes a mix of publics (Alabama, Michigan, etc.) and privates (Notre Dame, USC, Duke, etc.),
  3. his or her state flagships,
  4. other nearby state schools (e.g., the so-called “directional universities”),
  5. and perhaps a private liberal arts college or two in the immediate vicinity.

If we remove the purely regional bias built in to categories 3-5, then the “random average person/stranger” will have heard of HY[P?] plus the traditional football and basketball juggernauts. These are the colleges with true nationwide “name recognition.”

Said person will probably have a sense that HY[P?] and some of the big sports schools (Duke–“What a great b-ball program!”) are for “smart” people.

However, that won’t necessarily mean that he or she will be more impressed by these schools than by other well known but less “nerdy” schools. Based on my experience, for example, I’d say that a hard-core Gator fan from central Florida will be more impressed by learning that you attend UF (or even a hated nearby rival like Alabama or Miami) than by learning that you attend some far off–but occasionally good in football–school like Northwestern or Stanford.

20

Why would anyone care if the “average person” is impressed by where you go to college? In the end, you want a job and to be taught how to navigate a career. If your potential bosses and your professional community is aware of your school, you are only searching for meaningless status! Why waste the money on undergrad when your graduate education will be what matters?