Oh my I have never heard of Courant. Must go google.
“If you are into “prestige” then you are concerned with what the elites know not the schmos. And when it comes to elites, it is ALL about exclusivity. Cravath is incredibly prestigious. GS is absolutely prestigious – it is silly to say otherwise.”
There are different groups and definitions of elites, you know. It is self-referential to say “elite people are those people who work in investment banking circles on Wall Street, so therefore they value Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth, so therefore those schools comprise the set of elite schools.” There are old-money WASPs for whom eensy-weensy LAC’s that no one else knows about are the ultimate in prestige. There are professorial types who base it on the professors / courses. There are people from other countries who base it on “what’s known in my home country.” There are new-money types. There are different industries - banking, finance, Silicon Valley start-ups, the arts / theatre. You have to define the “who are you measuring this against” before you can define it.
I’m not doubting that Cravath and GS are prestigious – among the people for whom those industries are relevant / interesting. They may or may not be prestigious among the engineers and computer scientists in Silicon Valley who think that nothing is more prestigious or elite than creating the next Google.
I’ve given this example before. In i-banking, sure, working for GS is prestigious. No argument. In consulting, working for McKinsey is prestigious. No argument. I have clients in media companies who occupy the same “space” within media as GS does in IB and that McKinsey does in consulting.
The GS folks think they are doing the world’s most prestigious work - what is more prestigious than helping to finance or broker a hot deal between x and y? The McK folks think they are doing the world’s most prestigious work - what is more prestigious than being sought after by major companies to advise on major strategic decisions? The media clients think they are doing the world’s most prestigious work - what is cooler than being on the front line with the hottest celebrities?
How can you objectively say one of those is “more prestigious” than the other? It depends on who the audience is. The GS folks don’t envy the media folks – but what you don’t get is that the media folks don’t bow down in awe of the GS folks either.
I have a cousin who was a principal dancer with a major ballet company. Other cousins were getting into elite type colleges or getting fellowships and jobs with “prestige” type companies and it meant nothing to her (or to anyone she knew professionally). In the dance world, the pecking order is widely known and has nothing to do with Harvard or Goldman Sachs or Stanford. Some of her colleagues (famous, bold faced names) barely have a GED. (She happens to be a college graduate, but did so after an injury sidelined her career for a few years. She is an anomaly in her world).
Pizza is right on this point. It depends who you ask and where you are sitting and why you need to know. If you are a lawyer, clerking for the 9th circuit is a big deal. If you are not a lawyer, you hear that someone’s kid got a clerkship and you’re thinking “wow, four years of college and three years of law school and the best the kid can do is a government job?” The fact that this particular government job is considered a feeder to some of the big deal legal jobs (including eventual positions as judges on the federal bench) is meaningless if you’re a ballet dancer or a neurosurgeon (both of which have their own pecking orders of prestige).
JarJar, I hope you are still not perseverating over the relative prestige of NYU re: a career on Wall Street. I thought you’d moved past that a few weeks ago.
Prestige is not measured by what someone who doesn’t know anything thinks. GS is not rendered non-prestigious because lots of folks don’t know about Wall Street. NYC Ballet is not rendered non-prestigious because lots of folks don’t know anything about dancing. Most folks walking around wouldn’t know what Oxford or a Rhodes Scholarship is. Again, by that standard the Kardashians would be the ultimate in prestige. Duh.
Dictionary definition is: reputation or influence arising from success, achievement, rank, or other favorable attributes; distinction or reputation attaching to a person or thing and thus possessing a cachet for others or for the public.
The Heisman Trophy is incredibly prestigious. But Heisman winners rarely turn out to be the best or most successful football players. Peyton Manning, John Elway, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers never won a Heisman. But Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, Troy Smith, Matt Leinart, Jason White and Eric Crouch all did.
Prestigious is not the necessarily the best; it is the most exclusive. Nothing is prestigious without being exclusive – Harvard, Goldman, Cravath, Pine Valley, Navy SEALs, Heisman Trophy winners, Rhodes scholars, NYC Ballet principal dancers, Nobel prizes, the NY Yankees, Olympic champions, Supreme Court justices, etc. etc. etc.
Prestige is snob appeal. If you don’t care about snob appeal, then why are you discussing prestige?
If prestige isn’t snob appeal, then what is it? As the definition says, it is something that has cachet in the eyes of others – i.e. the club that won’t have most people as a member; the restaurant that you can never get a table at.
“If prestige isn’t snob appeal, then what is it?”
HAHAHAHAHA!!
While we are on the topic of prestige, would someone please explain what exactly the Ivy League is?
Wankery.
http://www.mappery.com/maps/A-View-of-World-from-9th-Avenue-Map.mediumthumb.jpg
And, to answer the question in #46, as has been discussed here before, the Ivy is a bad basketball conference (although Tommy Amaker has something good going in Cambridge).
Of course prestige is context specific.
Prestigious is different for a football player (Heisman) vs. a lawyer (Cravath) vs. a ballet dancer (NYCB) vs. an engineer (MIT) vs. a golfer (Pine Valley) vs. a soldier (Army Ranger) vs. a sailor (Navy SEAL) vs. a journalist (NY Times). But in all cases, the most prestigious is always the most exclusive.
If something isn’t elite and selective and exclusive, it is not prestigious.
Same goes for colleges.
This is why chasing prestige is kind of silly. In part because it’s hard to define, but also, as @SomeOldGuy said, it doesn’t put food on the table.
This brings to mind an anecdote: someone I know knew a guy who was pre-med at UChicago. He was more in to partying than studying, however, so he didn’t get in to med school. Turns out that he was good at selling, however, and he did well in medical device sales. People who knew him told him that with his sales skills and pedigree, he should go to Wall Street, but his response was: why should I go there? On Wall Street, I’d be competing against folks who are smarter and more driven than me. In my current field, I have an edge. Now he’s sold a marketing company he founded and is independently wealthy. Becoming a medical device saleman is nowhere as hard or as prestigious as working for Goldman, but are you going to argue that going to GS would have been a better path to take?
Technically, the Ivy League is a sports conference.
I’m convinced there are people who believe Yale is a school of locksmithing.
I told my soon to be Eph son to prepare for a life of blank stares.
Oh man, these threads go downhill. Always happens: one knows just what it is, kowtows, and thinks less of those who don’t agree. If that isn’t the lemmings rush, what is?
Prestige is like authority: it’s bestowed. And frankly anyone with an open mind isn’t running around bestowing it based on who recruits on campus or pays exorbitant salaries. If anything, this thread- and one set of arguments- shows prestige can be arbitrary.
Recognize that we are not discussing what is best, what will make you most successful, what’s worth paying for, what will get you a job, what will make you happy or what will make you wealthy. The question asked was what is most prestigious.
Prestige has a precise meaning – something that has cachet in the eyes of others.
If you are in the Navy, prestige means: Naval Academy, carrier pilot, SEAL and Admiral. That’s not arbitrary at all; it is actually very easy to define and identify.
If you play college football, the top prestige is Heisman Trophy. If you are a college student, the pinnacle of prestige is a Rhodes Scholarship. If you want to work in a law firm as an associate, Cravath is the prestige place to go.
All of those things are very selective and exclusive. Prestige of colleges is the same. Being an Eph is quite prestigious because Williams is incredibly hard to get into.
That doesn’t mean that Williams grads are the smartest or most successful or the best looking or the best anything else. It just means Williams is selective and exclusive; which equals prestigious.
At this point, I think you are being argumentative for sport. The question is WHOSE eyes. Your posting history bespeaks an East Coast WASP mindset and an unwillingness even to consider that other people in other places may have other perspectives. So go ahead and reply to this and make your point for the eighth or ninth time, but it is not improving with repetition.
“The question is WHOSE eyes.”
Totally agree with that. Prestigious for a football player is different than for a ballet dancer. Of course it is context specific.
Not trying to be argumentative at all. But in any line of endeavor, can something be prestigious if it is not selective and exclusive?
Indeed. To some folks, wealth=prestige, and being a Navy SEAL or Eph or Heisman winner is meaningless.
To various others, being well-learnt in the Chinese classics/Torah/Quran is prestigious (and being a Navy SEAL or Eph or Heisman winner is meaningless).
It seems that by “eyes of others”, you actually mean “your eyes”, @northwesty.
@Purpletitan Wow! You must really have a grudge against NYU to say that NYU CAS, Steinhardt and Gallatin are the equal to Pace. Really, no offense to Pace…but you must hold no regard to National Rankings, distribution of grades/ test scores of incoming freshman, faculty background, etc. to make that statement. Let’s face it, one is ranked #173, the other is in the low 30’s and has been for years. As a matter of fact, NYU is a school that holds quite a lot of prestige to many. I’m sure many will say its a lot more prestigious than Williams or Tufts or Rice because of its name brand recognition.
SomeOldGuy, please don’t cal it the WASP, east coast mindset. (Maybe I’m sensitive because another poster repeats this idea it’s all the NE’s fault.) The tippy tops are flooded with apps from all over the country, all over the world. Even from Illinois, haha. Puh-lenty of NE kids are going to non-elites and happy to do so.
You are arguing, northwesty. You are telling us you know the answer, that how you see it is how it is. Sometimes, the heat dissipates when a poster can just claim it as, Well, I think. Or, In my opinion. Own it.
@uskoolfish: Hit a nerve, I suppose? But that’s my point: ideas of the prestigiousness of various schools will vary (sometime widely) across individuals.
And I really don’t care much about the USNews rankings.
Nor do I consider NYU (outside of certain schools) to be on the same level as Williams, Tufts, or Rice.
In that sense, I consider NYU to be akin to IU or UIUC, where certain schools/departments are among the best in their field, but I would not consider the university overall to be at an Ivy-level or close.
Sorry if that opinion doesn’t agree with you.
But I’m not going to stop you from thinking that NYU is above Pace. If you think so, that’s great. Go right ahead. It’s a free country, after all, and we all are entitled to our opinions.
Not at all.
I personally don’t know who/what the top person/place for Chinese classics is. But my bet would be the most prestigious in that area would be the one that is the most selective and exclusive. Since that is consistently how prestige seems to be measured in all other lines of endeveavor.
Could you name something prestigious that is not exclusive and selective?
Being a billionaire is prestigious, yes, because there are very few of them.
Getting hired by Google is prestigious because they turn away almost everyone who applies.
Harvard, similarly, is prestigious because it is so hard to get into. But Harvard is not prestigious for football. Penn State is. Penn is not prestigous for football either, but it is for finance.
Do you disagree with any of those?
“Very few UPenn grads are mingling socially or professionally with PSU graduates. They’re going to NYC, SF, DC after college and associating largely with other Ivy graduates.”
This is completely silly.
Like anywhere else, some Penn grads will go into fields in which brand names are highly important and associate largely with other Ivy graduates. And some Penn grads will go into fields in which brand names are less important and associate with people all up and down the selectivity ladder.
And both types can go on to do important, fulfilling and lucrative work.
I am quite confident that if I were to look at the latest Penn (or other elite school) alumni magazine, I’d see alums doing all kinds of work in all kinds of fields.