Counselors ranking colleges by prestige

College Search & Selection
21

<p><i definitely="" agree="" that="" any="" ranking="" pairs="" lacs="" with="" research="" universities="" is="" flawed.=""></i></p><i definitely="" agree="" that="" any="" ranking="" pairs="" lacs="" with="" research="" universities="" is="" flawed.="">

<p>Not true. The list compares prestige, not academic opportunities. Whether people here want to admit it or not, your college's prestige continues to play a role in later life in the networks, both social and business, that radiate out from it. </p>

<p>I think the list is generally accurate, although I would shift a few names around myself. People here have to keep in mind, too, that some "prestige" is regional. For example, where I live, Penn State has a lot more oomph in the average person's mind than does Williams; however, if you talk to highly educated people and those in power, Williams will always get more respect. </p>

<p>The UC system, with the exception of Berkeley, is definitely not as prestigious east of the Rockies as it is west of them. As for NYU - well, I know there is a fascination with it here on CC and at many high schools, but it definitely does not have the kind of "real world" prestige that other schools on the list have. For example, a Princeton grad school program, when reviewing applications, won't be as impressed with an NYU degree as it will with one from Swarthmore or Smith or University of Michigan. </p>

<p>When you name an alma mater that has a lot of prestige, you see instant respect in the eyes of the other person. Is it fair? No. Does it have anything to do with USNews rankings? Absolutely not. But it's real, whether you are applying to grad school, interviewing for a job, or just talking to people in social situations. </p>

<p>Even though I've been out of college for far longer than I'd like to admit, I'm still asked fairly frequently where I went to college, so perceived reputation does continue to matter, even though not as much as it does immediately after graduation.</p>
</i>

22

<p>pateta, I don't think you appreciate how strong the students are at Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore or how hard it is to get into these schools. I think you could make a case that all three are top 10, depending what your criteria is. I find it interesting that you don't think Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore are top 20, but you do think that Colgate, a similar, but not as strong school is better than Emory, Vanderbilt, Rice, UNC. While I would agree with you about Colgate (except for Rice, which I think is considered stronger), it is surprising that someone with a disinclination towards LACs would. </p>

<p>I like lists than combine LACs with national universities; otherwise, it just ignores that people are making decisions between the two. It's good to get a relative sense between say, Northwestern and Bowdoin, instead of tacitly pretending that anyone considering Bowdoin only is also considering Middlebury and anyone considering Northwestern is only also considering WUSTL. </p>

<p>Alex, I don't agree with your statement at all. How are Brown and Wesleyan "completely different styles of education"?</p>

23

<ol>
<li>i made a mistake"Colgate better than emory vandy , rice , UNC chapel hill ..." i meant"Colgate better than emory vandy , rice , UNC chapel hill??"
"pateta, I don't think you appreciate how strong the students are at Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore or how hard it is to get into these schools. I think you could make a case that all three are top 10, depending what your criteria is" i have no doubt in my mind that it is very very hard to get in those schools and that their students are top notch but as far as prestige in general(not only on the northeast ) Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore would not be more prestigious than cornell for exemple.I think colleges plays a big roll in their respectives regions and universities would be more general
" For example, a Princeton grad school program, when reviewing applications, won't be as impressed with an NYU degree as it will with one from Swarthmore or Smith or University of Michigan. " i really don't think would be that different.i think that the individual itself matters more than the school.do you really think that a degree from columbia for exemple would give you a place in a princeton grad school program?</li>
</ol>

24

<p>Momwaiting is right. This was a survey on prestige. It's simply the prestige factor of being admitted and getting a degree from a particular college. It's perfectly reasonable to compare LACs with research universities in a survey of this type. She's also right that there are regional differences, but let's not forget that most of the US population is in the East.</p>

<p>Pateta:</p>

<p>You are wrong. I know this because I have been on committees looking over grad school applications. Sometimes, GREs play a large role, but a good GPA at a prestigious school combined with a rec from a prestigious faculty member carries a lot of weight. A really exceptional student from a middle-of-the-road state school will do just fine in grad school admissions, but someone whose record is a cut below that is going to do better being from a prestige school. </p>

<p>Fact of life.</p>

25

<p>i'm not talking about middle-of-the-road state school .Let's say two person are applying for grad school in stanford one from rice and another from Williams.Do you think that williams cares a lot more weight?
I'm not going to argue about this anymore.</p>

26

<p>Prestige is the issue and LACs and Undergrad programs at universities should be combined! Most people will judge the undergrad program (at least domestically) and its no secret that the top LACS and places like Dartmouth excel at both these areas. For example, just look at who gets the best recruiters: Dartmouth, Amherst, and Williams are better than everything except HYPSM. Look at the percentage of students at Harvard Law, Yale Law, Penn Med, Wharton MBA, Stanford MBA, etc. On a per-capita basis these schools are ALWAYS top 10, often top 6-7.</p>

<p>IMO: You are going to COLLEGE, save the unversity prestige arguments for grad school!</p>

27

<p>Slipper,
"For example, just look at who gets the best recruiters: Dartmouth, Amherst, and Williams are better than everything except HYPSM."</p>

<p>Where are you getting this from??? Are you saying there are recruiters right here in Manhattan that make the trip up to Hanover rather than up to Morningside Heights?? That is non-sense.</p>

28

<p>"Prestige" is such a vague concept. It is impossible to quantify and each person has their own definition and biases. And there are clearly regional biases. The top US publics are seen as more "prestigious" in the international arena and by academics/researchers than they are by the US general public. The reason for this is clearly selectivity... exclusivity breeds a bias in people who are, or want to be part of and exclusive club. So selective universities in the US are seen by the general public as being somehow "superior" to less selective ones. (This is probably an artifact of the US not having the same traditional class structures that existed in Europe, and therefore people needing to have a sense of worth or superiority by being affiliated with what can be agreed is exclusive.) However, the biggest fallacy in this perception is that selectivity does not always translate into academic strength. The large US public research universities are the obvious exceptions to the selectivity argument. Rankings that favor selectivity tend to be very different from rankings that focus on faculty quality or research. The clearest example of this is in the US is the USNWR undergraduate rankings vs. the NRC rankings (and even the USNWR graduate rankings). International rankings tend to look at faculty/program quality with a much greater weighting than selectivity, which is why they more closely mirror the NRC rankings than USNWR. The fact remains that in the US, the general public (with a strong East coast weighting) will tend to think of the smaller and selective privates as more prestigious than the large state schools. While academics and researchers will favor the strongest programs and faculty quality, many of which happen to be state universities. They're each just as prestigious in their own way.</p>

29

<p>i think you right. you guys know better than me i'm not even from here so i guess my conception of prestige is a little bit different.
"You are going to COLLEGE, save the unversity prestige arguments for grad school" Are you talking(well writing) to me? well see in portuguese the word college means university there is no such thing as college.so when i say university means university and college.it;s funny because when i went to emory days ago this lady at the financial aid asked me what college i was applying and i said emory university but she was talking about undergrad (emory college, oxford college)..
Anyway i guess my point is that there is not a huge gap btw those schools listed .I visited emory and vandy and i cried . i have never seen something like that they have top professor( with princeton stanford cornell...degrees) so many smart students from around the globe, everything is so beautiful, the labs top notch...i just don't there is the huge gap btw emory and williams for exemple.I know that here in the great land of america a lot of kids are very worried about prestige i just wanna say that don't be sad if you university are top 10 because there are plenty of exellent universities that will offers good oportunities.
i'm very impressed with america i think that moving here was the best thing i'ver done and i also very happy to know that despite beeing from south america people are treating me very nice and friendly.</p>

30

<p>College Grad, look up the consulting and banking lists. Williams, Dartmouth and company dominate elite recruiting. Dartmouth has 4/5 of the elite consulting firms and 5/7 elite banks. Only HYPS do better.</p>

31

<p>Slipper,
That's ridiculous!! Why you think recruiters would prefer to recruit at Dartmouth over Columbia is pure fantasy to me--sounds like self-boosterism to me. Are you saying a place like Goldman is not going to recruit at Columbia?? In NY, where most of these elite businesses are based, Columbia, along with many other great schools are heavily recruited by top firms, including Duke, Michigan, etc (i.e., not just ivy). I should know since I am on a recruiting committee of a top bank. In fact, many top banks recruit at 20 or so schools around the country. Unless you are prepared to provide a list of the name and number of firms recruiting at Dartmouth or anywhere else for that matter, your allegation is just that, an allegation. There is no need for this p*ssing contest but please don't make uncorroborated statements that lack support.</p>

32

<p>I agree with what Rick Tyler said about UW. I think prestige is such a regional thing its hard to take these rankings seriously. For example, Pomona, Vassar, Harvey Mudd, Bowdoin, etc. are great schools, but, to the average North Carolinian, there's no way they are more "prestigious" than UNC or even NC State because the average person and a lot of employers (I'm kind of guessing) here don't know anything about the schools I listed above. I'm sure its the other way around up north or out west.</p>

33

<p>Posted this before...As for banking, these banks consider Dartmouth a "core school" among others. Exactly the same as Columbia, yup, they all go to Hanover, NH since so many alums are from Dartmouth. Paulson, the ex head of Goldman was Dartmouth along with many others. </p>

<p>Goldman Sachs
Lehman Brothers
Merrill Lynch
UBS
Citigroup
JP Morgan
Lazard</p>

<h2>Blackstone</h2>

<p>This is from the vault guide to consulting. It lists CORE schools for consulting firms, but should give you some idea where the most elite firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Mercer, Monitor) recruit. The biggest lesson isn't looking at the exact numbers, but rather that the liberal arts schools do just as well or better than the business schools for the most elite firms. NOTE: these are CORE schools, just because a firm visits a career fair doesn't mean its a core school. </p>

<p>In order of # of the top 5 that directly recruit on campus: </p>

<p>All 5
Harvard
Yale
Stanford
Penn (Wharton and College) </p>

<p>4/5
Dartmouth
Princeton
Northwestern</p>

<p>3/5
MIT
Michigan</p>

<p>2/5
Duke
UVA
CAL
Amherst
Williams
Columbia</p>

<p>1/5
Brown
Cornell
Chicago
Emory
Rice
UNC
UIUC
Notre Dame
UT- Austin
BYU
Georgetown
SMU
Claremont college system (Pomona and Harvey Mudd)</p>

34

<p>I don't doubt that any bank that goes to Dartmouth also goes to Columbia (including probably a lot of smaller boutiques that go to Columbia, but not Dartmouth). However, I would venture that some of the top consulting firms (especially ones that are based in Boston) may recruit at Dartmouth, Amherst, Williams before Columbia.</p>

35

<p>slipper, Lazard and Blackstone aren't exactly the top firms for investment banking in comparison to Morgan Stanley, CSFB, Bear Stearns, BofA, but are more like boutiques (some of the last holdouts in the recent age of consolidation). Does Blackstone even do traditional investment banking? I don't think they have any retail distribution capabilities for starters.</p>

36

<p>I'm not sure why we are reinventing the wheel, here. Doesn't "prestige" pretty much correlate with selectivity? If not, why not?</p>

37

<p>nct3:</p>

<p>You are correct, of course, but understand that some schools have cachet anywhere in the US. UNC is widely respected around the country to people in the know (but not to the guy on the street). NC State ... well ... it has about as much cachet as Colorado State has in North Carolina.</p>

<p>I think a survey of this type, if done well, merely gives a sense of what schools tend to have name recognition and prestige power among the most people (note that I said "if done well"). It's safe to assume that Harvard has universal cachet even outside the US. To highly educated people, even in North Carolina, Williams and Amherst will have cachet.</p>

<p>And maybe that's the crux of the matter. Highly educated people everywhere are going to know the highly prestigious names. The man on the street is going to know the really, really famous names and the local names.</p>

38

<p>Pretty decent list.</p>

<p>Penn is a bit low and Bowdoin seems quite high (as others have noted)</p>

39

<p>Tarhunt:</p>

<p>That's exactly what I was trying to say. I may not have worded myself very well. There is a group of schools that are considered prestige everywhere i.e. harvard. There is also a group schools that are regarded as prestigious nationally by highly educated people but not really by your common person (most top lacs fall here). Then there are schools that are respected (maybe this is a better word than prestigious) more locally, such as lower flagship state schools i.e. nc state, but aren't prestigious at all once you leave the state that they are in</p>

40

<p>A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. :rolleyes:</p>