<p>Hi broseph stalins.
Everyone values prestige in colleges. A big part of the final decision for top students is which coat-of-arms will look nicest plastered on the rear window of their cars.
But I've noticed that geography is the biggest determinant of prestige, or at least it accounts for the huge discrepancies. For example, I live in VA, and HYP are looked upon as a tier above schools like UCB, Stanford, etc, while in California I'm sure the opposite is true (If RML is of any indication).
So I have a list of schools. Please put them in order of perceived prestige. Then post the state that you live in. Thanks.</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Dartmouth
Georgetown
UVA
UMich
UCBerkeley
UCLA
UChicago
Duke
Stanford
Williams
Reed
Pomona
Caltech
MIT
Northwestern
WUSTL</p>
<p>If you work on Wall St or Silicon Valley or Capitol Hill or anywhere else, prestige of where you graduated from is important to recruiters. So the question is whether prestige is universal or subject to geographical biases.
For example, let’s say your lucky stars line up and you get into Stanford and MIT. If you hope to get into coveted engineering jobs in burgeoning tech fields, perhaps Stanford is a more prudent choice.</p>
<p>I’m from California and I’d say they’re all in one large group, except for maybe Reed, WUSTL, and Williams. UMich isn’t as highly regarded as the others, either.</p>
<p>Ive noticed that WUSTL is treated pretty well by the evil USNWR, but they are really underrated in the big professional centers (east coast/west coast).</p>