It’s funny–the discussion of “tiers” was in some ways an improvement over the idea that a school that was number 6 on the USNWR list was somehow markedly better than number 7.
Personally, I think the top tier is pretty big. To me, it includes all highly selective schools–and arguable highly selective honors programs at less selective schools as well. That probably is between 50 and 100 schools, maybe more.
Obviously, Hunt, you didn’t go to Cornell.
Don’t you realize that all definitions of “top tier” on CC have to be devised in such as way as to exclude Cornellians?
[Full disclosure: I’m a Cornell graduate and the parent of a Cornell graduate. Hunt probably knows this, but you might not. And my daughter and I are both very satisfied with our choice of undergraduate institution, even if certain people here think that Cornell graduates read with their lips moving.]
Oh god, now we’re taking college advice from the guy at the car rental counter.
I think the “car rental guy” is somewhat typical of many immigrant parents who may have come from a country where there really is a huge difference between going to the “best” school and not, in terms of future success. Though my understanding is that even that is changing as opportunities for entrepreneurship open up nearly everywhere. So it’s not too surprising that they bring that expectation here.
@blossom =D> 
I’m making popcorn! This thread will likely end up at 20 pages.
The tiers in terms of contents and size will vary considerably depending on the BIAS of the responder. Rest assured that anyone who graduated from a public school eons ago or currently has kids in such a school will want to include a few public schools in the listing of “first tier schools.” Hence, the maligned first page of the USNews ranking will be the standard, namely with 50 schools, plus a sprinkle of the Honors’ colleges from the second page.
Others might decide to do it a bit differently. The first cut should be at the 20 (and exclude a couple of public darlings) or bring it down to 30 to please the Michigan, Cal, and UCLA fans. The second tier would be the one omitted from the previously described list.
Just as there have been grumblings about the schools listed on CC (which is known to have been made using the back of a napkin without much thought about the discussions it generated later) when one is excluded, you can expect that NO list will be on the “accepted list.”
On a personal note, I do not think it makes any difference, safe and except for the purpose of irritating a couple of fanboys every April! If I were to pick a list, I would look at the Atlantic Monthly from about a decade ago and call those schools the “first tier.” The rest? A big yawner in all senses of the term.
The reality is that, IMHO, the best approach is to compose an individual list based on the student “reach, possible, and highly likely” and arrive at a personal list of tiers. Those tiers might be very different from the usual ones built on prestige or other illusory criteria.
Since there is no way we’re all going to agree on what “top tier” is, here’s my POV. It’s as worthwhile/worthless as anyone’s: “Top tier,” in terms of selectivity=admission rates below 15%. “Second tier”=16-30%. “Good”=I’ve heard of the school or I know someone who went there and don’t think they’re an idiot. As parents, I think we can all agree that we want our children to go to schools that are “good” or above. 
Hey, @Marian, on my prestigiosity scale, Cornell is 16th, tied with the University of Chicago. That’s pretty good!
However you define it, there is no shame in being Second Tier.
Yes, but people don’t get upset about UChicago. They get upset about Cornell because it’s Ivy League and doesn’t “deserve” to be, in their eyes.
Historically the US News and World Report made up the tiers described in post #17. These days, pretty much anything goes. To me top tier is a place where my kids are likely to be challenged and unlikely to get perfect grades.
This could be true. What causes this is another story. (Too many colleges and too few opportunities for upward social mobility in some of these countries - especially the more “developed” cities or countries?)
We should count our blessing that we have more roads to the Rome, if this is true. (i.e., In our societies, we have more varieties of channels to climb the social ladder in one’s life if a person is not born into a “good” family.)
Many people here could not imagine what the youngsters in these countries (esp., their urban area) have to go through. I guess it could be a very depressing environment.
The only tier of school I don’t want my remaining child to attend is the one containing the institutions where the students who attend from our town say it’s easier than high school. I’d call those bottom tier.
I’ve always been a fan of Loren Pope’s “Colleges That Change Lives” criteria – it’s not a college’s ranking or “tier” that matters, but rather those aspects of the college that can truly have a lasting, positive impact on students’ lives. He deliberately set out to find and promote colleges that aren’t necessarily well known and aren’t the most exclusive, but which offer excellent education and career guidance to each and every student. There are about 50 on his list, but he and the foundation that continues his work emphasize that the list isn’t all-inclusive. http://www.ctcl.org/about/why-ctcl
Clearly, the top tier are the colleges that my children attended, attend now, or will attend in the future.
huh, I don’t get it… 
I thought Harvard was easier than my high school.
Pope isn’t the be-all and end-all. I’ve known some students who were very poorly served by colleges he’s a fan of. But it’s certainly a point of view worth considering.
[never mind]
It’s fairly arbitrary in many respects, and is very subject to subjective opinions of the schools. MIT is one of the top schools, but that doesn’t mean that MIT is the best choice for everyone. There are some schools that are significantly better for many fields.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT (or HYPSM) are often considered “the top” schools. However, this often gets taken drastically out of context. There are MANY other good schools. In addition to HYPSM, there’s UChicago, Berkeley, UIUC, CalTech, the rest of the Ivy’s (Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia) that are not always considered “top” in the same sense as HYPSM, and many others. The Ivy League has some mythical presence in our culture, but the reality is that there are plenty of schools on an equal playing field, and some that are significantly better than any of the Ivy League schools.
UIUC is a school that most don’t consider to be a “top school,” and yet for my major (physics), it’s ranked number 9 in the country (by US News). The only Ivy’s that rank higher than UIUC for physics are Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell. Similar examples can be made with numerous other fields where UIUC ranks as one of the top schools for a field yet is not considered to be a “top school.” Examples include accounting (ranked #2 in the country), engineering (tied for #6 with three other schools), computer science (#5, with four schools tied for #1), and other specific areas of engineering where they rank #1-#5 in the country. It may just be me, but it seems odd that a school can be considered at the top in several rather large undergraduate majors, and yet not be considered a top school. A lot of people don’t consider Berkeley to be a top school, and yet it’s ranked near the top in just about any comparison.
A lot of people have mentioned acceptance rates as some kind of indicator of “ranking,” but I really don’t buy that. Those statistics are inflated and fudged like crazy. I’ve received email from four different Ivy League institutions inviting me to apply, and I know a bunch of other people that have received the same emails. I think I’d be a fairly competitive applicant (I’m a CC transfer student), but plenty of people that have gotten these emails are in no sense a competitive applicant for these schools. But they’re invited to apply even though they don’t have a shot, and then get rejected. In turn, their “selectivity” ranking goes up because they’ve invited unqualified applicants to apply.
tl;dr - People spend far too much time worrying about the whole top-tier, second-tier, third-tier thing, and don’t often consider the fact that these rankings are often meaningless in the grand scheme of things.