<p>Anybody seen this before? My counselor gave this ranking to me, and it said "one thousand fifty counselors were asked to rate american colleges on percieved prestige" :</p>
<p>*in rank order</p>
<p>Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Stanford
Columbia
Caltech
MIT
Williams
Darmouth
Cornell U
Brown
Amherst
Duke
U-Penn
U Chicagon
Rice
UVA
Georgetown
Berkeley
Swarthmore
Pomona
Haverford
US Naval Academy
Johns Hopkins
Middlebury
West Point
Bowdoin
Wellsley
Northwestern
WUSTL
Vanderbilt
Smith
North Carolina
Carleton
Wesleyan
Washington & Lee
UCLA
Vassar
Barnard
Michigan
Tufts
Bryn Mawr
Trinity (CT)
Wisconsin
Colgate
US Airforce Academy</p>
<p>I don't know how reliable it is... but thoughts?</p>
<p>Just a combined list of privates, publics, LACs, and service academies with the usual suspects populating it. It's just another completely subjective and therefore worthless ranking...</p>
<p>For the most part your list looks pretty good to me. I don't think I would put Trinity in front of Colgate and wouldn't put Columbia nearly that high, but otherwise, it seems reasonably good, at least, within a few places. It's hard to figure where service academies fit because they're a different animal and its hard to say that Williams is better than Dartmouth and that Amherst is worse; but order of magnitude is OK. I definitely wouldn't say Bowdoin is too high.</p>
<p>I have some quibbles with both lists (Columbia seems too high on one list and Dartmouth too high on the other), but both lists agree with my own subjective impression that Duke, Penn, and WUSTL are ranked way higher on USNews than they deserve. The rankings here for those three schools seem more realistic.</p>
<p>It's interesting that Columbia would be so high on that list, but that the supposed current #1 dream school, NYU doesn't even make a top 46 billing on it. Duke is #10 on one of these lists and #11 on the other out of the national universities vs #8 on USNWR. It's not like that's a huge difference. It's also interesting that Trinity is on there before Colby, Bates, Hamilton (the first two of which make the Brody list above Trinity).</p>
<p>Let's not forget that "prestige" is a heavily regional thing once you get past HYPSM. If you wanted to be look for a job in nearly any field in California, for example, USC would jump up 20 or 30 places. I've written this before, if you were looking for a job in Seattle, UW -- which doesn't even make the "prestige" list -- would jump into the top 20. Hey, you utes, don't obsess about this crap. It really doesn't mean what you think it means.</p>
<p>If you are looking for an academic position... well... actually, your undergrad wouldn't make any difference at all, and there really is no such thing as a whole-university rating for graduate schools that makes any sense.</p>
<p>Dartmouth in front of MIT or CalTech may be debatable, but would historically agree with placement in front of the rest or at least would when I was applying to school not that long ago. I think the Brody rankings are trying to capture long, established perceptions, not USNWR rankings of the last two years. To incredulously suggest that Dartmouth is out of place in front of UPenn shows no knowledge of even recent history, but I'll let slipper vent his rage on that one.</p>
<p>I think Simba's prestige list is pretty accurate. I would put MIT at #5 though and I think Harvey Mudd and perhaps Bowdoin are a little high. Otherwise, it looks pretty realistic.</p>
<p>You are absolutely correct that your undergrad school matters not at all when it comes to obtaining a faculty position. Having said that, your undergrad school and record does count when applying to the top grad schools. If you want to get into a top grad department, it is very useful to have a degree from a well-respected university, excellent grades and test scores, and a glowing recommendation from someone the faculty in the grad school respects a great deal.</p>
<p>I absolutely agree with BusinessGuy. For example, I have very high regard for the education at Washington and Lee University. However, W&L essentially had no national reputaion and was hardly known outside of Virginia up until the "USNews phenomenon" in the late 1990s. Does that mean it wasn't an excellent college prior to then? Nonsense! So my point is, these subjective rankings can be flawed and fluid.</p>
<ol>
<li>i don't like when they mix LAC's with universities....
The south are universities like Vandy emory , rice and ut austin deserves to be much higher.
the first 20 looks good exept Amherst Williams and Swarthmore( i'm sorry but no place for these on top 20) cornell should be i little higher.
Harvey Mudd totally out of place way too high.
This is just my opinion based on many rankings i've seen and also based on professor i've talked.
Even if this rank is for undergrad looks very strange .
Also from my own experience some couselors know nothing.
If you ask a counselor from lets' say new york i think he/she will mostly say that NYU is one of top 10 .</li>
</ol>
<p>I definitely agree that any ranking that pairs LACs with research universities is flawed. It simply isn't possible. They propose completely different styles of education. I also agree that the Southern schools are slightly underrated. But by and large, I think Brody's list is pretty good.</p>
