I think that there are perhaps a handful of truly prestigious schools in the world. But, what I think doesn’t really matter. IMO prestige only plays on the margins when it comes to employment, and that type of prestige is much wider as it pertains to programs. For example, I have no problem saying that Harvard is a prestigious school while in the same breath saying that MIT is much more prestigious when it comes to EE programs. At a social gathering I would find a mention of attending Harvard or MIT equally interesting.
I find interesting people and interesting conversations interesting. You need more than a mention of attending a given school to get to either.
I have a low bar compared to you. So,…
The landscape of “prestige” certainly has changed over the years since I applied to colleges in the late 70’s. Back then, the top students in my high school (and other high schools in my state, Delaware) applied to HYPM as their reaches (admissions rates back then were about 20-25%) and the other Ivies as high matches. As a border state, there were top students that applied to Duke, William & Mary, UVA and UNCCH, who wanted a more southern experience. UD was pretty much the go to for most students and the safety for those going for reach schools. Personally, I never even heard of Amherst or Williams, and only knew about Swat and Haverford because they sent me brochures.
Back then, because each application was unique, and you had to handwrite or manually type each app, it was hard to apply to more than 5 or 6 schools. Also there was less outreach to lower SES or minority students. During that era, there was less than 15% minority students (including Asians), over 40% came from private schools, and legacies made up 20%± of the entering class at Yale. https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pierson_update_1976-2000.pdf
I think there is a lot of merit to the comments above as to how “prestige” (maybe “brand recognition” is a better term) was widened when the Common App and outreach by the “old guard” schools created much more diversity and demand for those schools, resulting now in single digit acceptance rates or even low double digit rates at schools where good students formerly could count on as being matches. Exclusivity, as we all know, can be bought. Sometimes the additional resources can result in a higher quality education, especially if you can attract a critical mass of “scholarship” students.
As to the original topic of this thread, certain schools do have national recognition as to entry level jobs as a general matter (not diving into specific majors). I agree that a HYPMS graduate will not have an advantage competing for a job in Texas with a UT grad (all things being equal) or a UIUC graduate in Chicago but that same UT grad will have a harder time getting that job in Chicago and the UIUC grad in Texas. The “nationally prestigious” schools IMO give their graduates more geographic options for entry level jobs.
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Well. I agree with you in the sense that that having a Harvard BA doesn’t make someone interesting, if they aren’t already so. But, knowing they went to Harvard is an interesting factoid. In fact, I’ll go a step further and say that back east (or maybe I should just say, New York City) the question, where someone attended college, is still a common ice-breaker and the answer (or, in some cases non-answer) is still apt to be interesting.
Where people went to college is an ice-breaker pretty much everywhere (at least in groups where general understanding is everyone went to college). That concept isn’t limited to back east or NYC.
I do agree with that. 
Whew! One less thing we can blame on the Eastern Establishment. 
Where you went to college is not much of an ice-breaker here, but I’m far removed from my college days. “What do you do” is an ice-breaker here. I can’t remember the last time I heard a grown adult ask another grown adult where they went to college unless they were talking about sports or something.
I am not interested at all if someone went to Harvard or Yale or Princeton because I don’t know that many people who attended those schools. (I mean I know a couple who did grad work there and one or two from high school that went to undergrad who I don’t keep up with. )
If I was at a party (hate parties even pre-COVID btw) and I asked someone where they went to college I would be kinda bored if they said they went to HYP, etc, because I can’t then follow up with, “oh, what year were you?” like I could if somebody said they went to UNC-Chapel Hill (where I went) to see if we had any common friends or classes or whatever. There’s no commonality for me if they went to HYP, etc. It would be the same as asking someone where they went to high school in California when I’m in NC. I am not super impressed that they went to an Ivy League school.
If this hypothetical party-goer who went to HYP was having an interesting career in Coronavirus research, or returning art stolen by the Nazis, or doing voice-acting, then their career would be a very interesting subject for discussion, but not the fact that they went to HYP. Their career would still be interesting if they went to UT or UNC or Ohio State or UNC-Greensboro or wherever.
In fact, if someone started in talking about how they went to Harvard or Yale or Princeton, etc 20 years ago at this hypothetical party I’d think they were a bit of an arrogant SOB.
@EconPop The latter’s true for 90%+ of applicants since they accept below 10% (and in some cases 5%) of all applicants—at some point, if you’re not a national/international award winner or some other amazing applicant, it’s up to chance and changing institutional priorities (accepting more ED applicants to increase yield, increasing geographic diversity etc.)
When it comes to prestige in the broadest sense of world (across regions/worldwide,) most people know of Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and maybe Yale (not as much for STEM.) Cornell’s known for CS/Engineering as are Carnegie Mellon and Caltech. Johns Hopkins for medicine.
The other Ivies/T20s tend to be known by association—for example, my immigrant parents in STEM didn’t know what Brown was (and definitely had no clue what Vanderbilt or USC were,) but they did know about Cornell and Harvard (+the schools listed above,) and by association understood that the Ivy League connects the three.
@circuitrider I read the Gatekeepers a few months ago and a fact I found interesting was that Brown was need-aware for a few years in the early 2000s due to financial worries. The school also had ~2000 students/year compared to the ~1660 now (this year was an anomaly since Admissions purposefully over-enrolled by 100 students.) Wesleyan, on the other hand, though also struggling was still need-blind across the same time period, thought this may have been due to the smaller size.
I knew there would be a wide range of reactions, which is why I restricted myself to New York City. No one where I live can safely assume you were born here. Virtually everyone I know is from somewhere else and it’s a slippery slope from “Where are you from?” to “Where did you go to college?”.
I may not go to a lot of cocktail parties, but Sundays after church (under pre-pandemic circumstances) are certainly occasions for meeting a fair number of people from a vast array of undergraduate colleges. And, yes, occasionally I have met people who knew friends we had in common. Maybe, it’s because the eastern schools tend to be smaller than state flagship universities, but, until now, I never realized how rare that phenomenon is.
Secondly, a lot of people in New York seem to have masters and other graduate degrees and those degrees are directly related to the sort of work they do. Again, it’s a slippery slope from where they got their teacher certifications (to use one example) to where they got their BAs. Not sure what the issue is.
I will say this, though. I have yet to visit a single doctor’s office that bothers displaying their undergraduate degree. So, yeah, I guess context has something to do with how the subject comes up.
Wesleyan was not far behind Brown in surrendering its need-blind status. IIRC, it was need-aware for much of the 1990s and may have gone need-blind just in time for “The Gatekeepers” publication. Its reputation for wealth and diversity had created a demand for financial aid that was ultimately impossible to meet without major new resources. Today, even the richest schools have to keep an eye on where they recruit and how they manage growth in tuition discounting.
You are, however, correct in that Brown had to devote a lot of resources toward buttressing its graduate schools whereas Wesleyan never really had to contend with that. Wesleyan’s 300 combined graduate students barely register as a line item today.
Maybe it is a thing in your social circles that college attended/graduated is one of the first things to ask, but that is not necessarily true in other social circles (even those where it is likely that most people have at least a bachelor’s degree).
@circuitrider, I live in Chapel Hill, NC. I believe we have one of the highest rates of advanced degrees in the country last I checked. (If you trust WalletHub we’re the number 4 most educated city behind Ann Arbor, the San Jose area, and the DC area. We’re lumped in with Durham which probably brings it down a little.) We also have people from all over the world who live here, just like in NYC. “Where did you go to college” would not be a super common ice-breaker question here. I mean it wouldn’t be super weird, but it’s probably not the first thing you’d ask a new acquaintance. You might well ask them where they are from or what they do, but in my experience where you went to college tends to come up more as you get to know a person. Like I said, I’m not a party person, though, so maybe amongst those folks they talk about it right when they meet, but I really don’t think so. And I definitely would think somebody was stuck on themselves if they kept talking about how they went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale or worse Duke!!
Which begs the question, what is your social circle?
Yeah, I think we’re verging on burning a few straw men, here. And, I’m certainly not offering New York City as some sort of paragon of the most-educated. Believe me, I have lots of North Carolina relatives and I know better than to do that!
I think my social circle is mainly other parents. I do have some friends who don’t have kids, but I have met a lot of my friends through my kids.
I’ll tell ya I only have a BA and I feel fairly undereducated here in Chapel Hill. I am acquainted with lots of folks of all sorts — some have advanced degrees and teach at UNC or Duke or are medical, tech, or other professionals, some are artists and musicians, some just went to high school and didn’t go to college or went to the military or went to college on the GI bill. Most folks I know went to college, but I don’t make that assumption when meeting someone although I think the percentage of adults with at least a Bachelors in Chapel Hill is something like 75% or more with about 40% or more being Masters and PhDs. Education is a very big deal here overall.
It is coming up more in conversation now as our kids are looking ahead to colleges themselves, but where you went to college 20 or 30 or more years ago is just not a hot topic of conversation generally here.
Catching up on this thread after a day or two away …
I must admit I’d never heard of High Point before this thread, so I guess that partly talks to the title. A bit maybe like we got to know about Santa Clara as it’s local to NorCal, but it only recently and tentatively seems to be making its way as a known entity more widely.
Re icebreakers - at my age it is more “where are your kids at school?”! Our town has many (many) Cal/Stanford alumni so “prestige” (whatever that is) is almost taken for granted. The downside of that is the pressure a lot of parents place on their kids to get into the same kind of colleges they went to, without always necessarily realizing how much harder it is now.
(And as an aside @Sweetgum , feel free to PM with questions about the UK if you have further questions. I’m a graduate of two unis there (one Oxbridge and one not), and more up to date I have two nephews currently at uni there (one in a Russel group college and the other at a hardly-known-outside-its-niche college) as well as a good friend who is a prof at a redbrick, so I kind of have varied bits of knowledge.)