<p>This is just an "out of curiosity" topic. I know that people like to talk about reputation, strong programs, prestige, etc., but it seems very focused on domestic opinions. Furthermore, I feel that most perspectives are biased coast-wise (perhaps because there are more of those opinions floating about here...).</p>
<p>So, I just wanted to get an idea of what schools are well-respected internationally, or whether there are some places where no one has any idea about US schools. Which ones are the most prestigious abroad, and may not be so popular here? Which ones are hot in the US but virtually unknown abroad?</p>
<p>Famous in Europe because of academics: Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Yale in not particular order.
Famous in Europemostly due to athletics: UCLA (basketball) and Texas (football).
Famous in the US but not in Europe: Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Northwestern (If you say Kellogg they’ll think of the cereal brand)</p>
<p>Harvard University<br>
Stanford University<br>
Yale University<br>
California Institute of Technology<br>
University of California at Berkeley<br>
Massachusetts Institute Of Technology<br>
University of California at San Francisco<br>
Columbia University<br>
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor<br>
University of California at Los Angeles<br>
University of Pennsylvania<br>
Duke University<br>
Princeton University<br>
Cornell University<br>
University of Chicago<br>
University of Washington at Seattle<br>
University of California at San Diego<br>
Johns Hopkins University<br>
University Texas at Austin<br>
University of Wisconsin at Madison<br>
University of Minnesota Twin Cities<br>
Washington University in St. Louis<br>
Northwestern University<br>
University of Pittsburgh<br>
New York University<br>
Pennsylvania State University<br>
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill<br>
University of Maryland<br>
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign<br>
University of Colorado at Boulder<br>
University of Southern California<br>
Brown University<br>
University of California at Santa Barbara<br>
Michigan State University<br>
Boston University<br>
Vanderbilt University<br>
University of Rochester<br>
Carnegie Mellon University<br>
Texas A&M University<br>
University of Virginia<br>
Purdue University<br>
Emory University<br>
Case Western Reserve University<br>
University of Massachusetts at Amherst</p>
<p>UMass, Case Western, Purdue, Texas A&M, BU, Michigan State, Minnesota, Pittsburgh are relatively unknown in the US since many consider them as “large, state schools” but they have an excellent reputation internationally. (My uncle in Hong Kong went to college in Minnesota after high school and many people even know UMass)</p>
<p>Surprisingly, Dartmouth is the only ivy league school that does not have a huge reputation outside of the US.</p>
<p>From my experience living in Western Europe and the Middle East, there are roughly 15 US universities that are well regarded among the intellectual and professional elite. Those would be:</p>
<p>Columbia University
Cornell University
Duke University
Georgetown University
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
New York University
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Chicago
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University</p>
<p>Other universities, such as Boston University, Brown, George Washington, Notre Dame, UCLA, UIUC, UNC, USC, UT-Austin, Wisconsin and several others, will be well recognized too, but probably not quite to the same extant.</p>
<p>And I am not sure I agree with SuperPippo about schools like UCLA and Texas being recognized because of their athletic prowess. Western European couldn’t care less about American Football and aren’t the biggest fans of college Basketball either.</p>
<p>Huh. Where I live in India, Princeton is better known than Yale and Stanford except to those applying to college. Everyone knows H, P and Wharton, most know MIT, Stanford, Yale and Columbia, many have heard of Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell and Northwestern, and the rest are basically reserved for those in the know.</p>
<p>Anecdotal evidence is often unreliable but there is one tool that helps answer a question like this.</p>
<p>Google Trends is one way of assessing the level of interest in different search terms around the world. It won’t tell you the level of respect for each institution but it can help tell you the level of popular interest in each. If you look just at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale and omit references to professional schools (so that you are comparing apples to apples) you can see a comparison of the frequency of web searches around the world for those names. </p>
<p>This is not a perfect tool since certain biases are included. The prominence of Stanford athletics certainly boosts the search frequency for that school and Princeton probably benefits from The Princeton Review. Both Harvard and Yale benefit from various professional publications carrying their university names. You can adjust the comparison by subtracting specific terms from each search.</p>
<p>Overall, around the world, the order of interest in web searches seems to be Harvard first, Stanford and Princeton alternating between second and third but about equal, and Yale consistently fourth. This is certainly the pattern in the U.S. as you can see at the bottom of the web page. In other countries, the search priority varies. Princeton does badly in the UK. Stanford does very well in India, etc.</p>
<p>You can also change the rankings shown for cities and languages. Doing so will show that the greatest number of Stanford searches actually occur in the Korean language with English second. For Princeton, the most common search language is English, followed by Japanese. For Harvard it is first English followed by Spanish. For Yale it’s English followed in second place by Italian.</p>
<p>Google Trends is a remarkable and entertaining tool. Try it with other universities or different search terms.</p>
<p>I’ve been to East Asia and South East Asia.</p>
<p>Highly regarded schools among elites and professionals (though limited) here include</p>
<p>Harvard
MIT
Yale
Cal Tech
Stanford
Johns Hopkins
Pennsylvania
Chicago
Duke
Berkeley
UCLA
Northwestern
Rice (yes, Rice!)
Columbia
Cornell
Georgetown</p>
<p>Wisconsin, Illinois, USC, North Carolina, Washington - Seattle, Arizona, and Michigan are referred as good schools, but not as much as above 16 schools I’ve mentioned.</p>
<p>My father is from India and all of the ivies besides Dartmouth and Brown are very well known. Also Vandy, Gtown, NYU, and all of the big branded colleges are very well regarded in the middle-east.</p>
<p>Also, in Europe people will refer to UC Berkeley as the University of Berkeley, which clearly shows they only reason why they have heard about is due to the 60s hippies movement.</p>
<p>“Also, in Europe people will refer to UC Berkeley as the University of Berkeley, which clearly shows they only reason why they have heard about is due to the 60s hippies movement.”</p>
<p>Huh?! Cal is often known as Berkeley and it has little to do with the civil rights movement. Cal was considered one of American’s top 5 universities way back in the 1940s and 1950s.</p>
<p>^ heh, did you see the Google stats posted earlier in this thread?..I’m sure all those Berkeley searches in Europe were for people researching the anti-war movement. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>These are some rankings from the UK. The US schools in the overall top 50 (with rank, last year’s rank):</p>
<p>01 01 HARVARD University
02 02 YALE University<br>
05 07 CALIFORNIA Institute of Technology (Calt…
08 07 University of CHICAGO<br>
09 10 MASSACHUSETTS Institute of Technology (M…
10 11 COLUMBIA University<br>
11 14 University of PENNSYLVANIA<br>
12 06 PRINCETON University<br>
13 13 DUKE University
13 15 JOHNS HOPKINS University<br>
15 20 CORNELL University<br>
17 19 STANFORD University
18 38 University of MICHIGAN<br>
21 20 CARNEGIE MELLON University<br>
27 32 BROWN University<br>
30 41 University of CALIFORNIA, Los Angeles (U…
33 29 NORTHWESTERN University
36 22 University of California, BERKELEY<br>
40 49 NEW YORK University (NYU)<br>
46 47 BOSTON University</p>