<p>Someone did a thread and asked people to rank these schools (top 20 from USNWR) in terms of prestige. I'm going to ask people to rank in terms of overall academics, quality of education, professors, etc. All in all, ignoring prestige, rank these universities from best to worst, although none of them are bad.</p>
<p>Brown
Caltech
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Emory
Harvard
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
UChicago
UPenn
Vanderbilt
WashU StL
Yale</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton, Stanford
MIT
University of Chicago, Caltech
Columbia
UPenn
Duke
Dartmouth
Cornell, Brown
Johns Hopkins
Rice
Wash U
Northwestern
Emory
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame</p>
<p>MIT
Stanford
BERKELEY
Harvard
Caltech
Duke
Princeton
Northwestern
University of Chicago
Cornell
Rice
Yale
Notre Dame
Columbia
UPenn
Johns Hopkins
Wash U
Vanderbilt
Emory
Dartmouth
Brown</p>
<p>I’m of the firm belief that the Ivies don’t have much to offer beyond prestige…</p>
<p>didn’t stop me from applying though! hehe</p>
<p>EDIT: to add berkeley</p>