<p>Age: 19
Location: Singapore</p>
<p>Tier 1: HYPSM, Oxford, Cambridge
Tier 2: Rest of the Ivies, Cal Tech, UChicago, Berkeley, Duke
Tier 3: UCLA, Michigan, UCL, Imperial College, LSE</p>
<p>Other top schools like Rice, Northwestern, WUSTL, JHU, Emory, Vanderbilt are not well-known at all and not many top student apply to those schools. LACs, even the top ones, are also relatively unknown to students and teachers.</p>
<p>I don’t get your point. The general public, and indeed some business leaders of lesser companies know little about colleges that are far from home. For a large number of people the colleges they know are those that are physically close or because children of friends and colleagues attend them</p>
<p>But to high level professional and business leaders all of the colleges on your list, including Rice, Northwestern, WUSTL, JHU, Emory, Vanderbilt, are known and are highly regarded. If you graduate from any of them and apply for a professional job in a global company the people who interview you will know of these colleges.</p>
<p>In the US, Rice, Northwestern, etc. are quite well-regarded all over. </p>
<p>When I went to school in London, all of the schools you mentioned were highly regarded. Oxford and Cambridge being the obvious ones, but UCL and Imperial were often highly talked about. LSE was too, but not as much as UCL.</p>