<p>Hey everyone, I just finished my junior year of high school and will be a senior my next year. As you probably know, that means I have to make a list of colleges that I will be applying to this winter. I already have a rough list of my colleges, but would like to get the your opinion on my dream university, UCLA. It has been my dreams to attend UCLA since I was a young child but the thing is my parents want me to attend a "prestigious" university. I'm not sure how prestigious UCLA since it is after all a public university. Do you consider it to be prestigious?</p>
<p>Yes, it is prestigious.</p>
<p>It’s most definitely prestigious! Show your parents UCLA’s national rankings. They might be impressed. ;-)</p>
<p>By the way, what do you want to study? Are you interested in sports?</p>
<p>Just because it’s a public university doesn’t mean it can’t be prestigious.</p>
<p>how about USC? is it prestigious?</p>
<p>
Sadly, there was an entire thread devoted to that topic.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/734466-safe-say-usc-top-tier-prestigious.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/734466-safe-say-usc-top-tier-prestigious.html</a></p>
<p>ENUFF. Anyone asking about “prestigious” is automatically assigned to a community college for life.</p>
<p>Yes, UCLA is a prestigious university. Even if its not as prestigious as the Ivys’, its still a great and vibrant university to be at.</p>
<p>Why is prestigious so important to you? Do you care if it’s good, or simply prestigious?</p>
<p>There’s no doubt in my mind that UCLA is prestigious.</p>
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I find their insistence that you live up to some sort of exclusive standard disturbing. Still, you have no worries - UCLA is prestigious by almost any definition.</p>
<p>I suspect that by “prestige,” your parents actually mean “name recognition.” As in, watching the relatives’ jaws drop at Easter dinner when they oh-so-casually announce that you got into XYZ University.</p>
<p>You might tell them that prestige and excellence may overlap, but they are not the same thing. Far more important than bragging rights at the office is making sure that you and your college are a good fit.</p>
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</p>
<p><em>sigh</em>. How about reading the thread before jumping to conclusions? This attitude that Pizzagirl shows is growing larger on these boards and is starting to irritate me.</p>
<p>I dont go to either of the schools, but I would definitely have to put my input into the UCLA vs. USC debate.</p>
<p>UCLA > USC by far: academics, cost, and quality of campus</p>
<p>Shouldn’t you ask your parents, if they’re the ones making the judgment?</p>
<p>Thing is, if the parents don’t know that USC would generally be considered prestigious, the people they’re going to want to impress aren’t going to be particularly knowledgeable either. </p>
<p>Are you looking for true “prestige” among the educated, or are you looking for “prestige” among people who believe that prestige only comes from attending a very small select group of universities? For example, just to pick on Haverford as one that comes to mind, Haverford has plenty of prestige among educated people, but it doesn’t have a lot of name recognition and hence prestige among the people who believe that prestige consists only of a handful of select colleges.</p>
<p>It’s rather like window-shopping and picking a handbag because it’s Louis Vuitton or Burberry and thus is well-known, as opposed to picking a handbag because it’s high quality and well-made. The LV and Burberry handbags may indeed be high quality and well-made, but so are plenty of other handbags.</p>
<p>“Prestigious” implies “impresses others.” The people who have the most social status in this country – for example, old-style High WASPs – never needed to chase certain schools in order to impress others. Part of being “prestigious” is not seeming to be too wrapped up in what other people think of your decisions.</p>
<p>Undergrad is it sort of prestigious. Ph.D. level it is Top 15 in the country, but that doesn’t mean much since the only prestige at the ph.D. level that matters is in YOUR discipline…</p>
<p>Nonetheless, at the Ph.D. level UCLA is highly prestigious, along with it’s older brother UC Berkeley which is one of the top 3 Ph.D. Univesities in the world (along with Harvard and Stanford)</p>
<p>Yup, I would say its pretty prestigious. Even if it wasn’t its still a great University.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the word “prestigious” is etymologically related to the term “prestidigitation,” or slight of hand.</p>
<p>Right. Which is why, even though it bums out monstor344, there’s a difference between asking whether a college offers an excellent education and whether a college is prestigious. One is about the quality of the <em>product</em>; the other is about whether being affiliated with that product will impress others (be they friends, family, potential employers, grad schools).</p>
<p>But what “impresses” people isn’t necessarily based on reality. The average person on the street is indeed impressed by Harvard (as they should be) but what do they base it on? Vague perceptions that Harvard’s a really great school where smart people go. They don’t have any basis for their perceptions. They’re not thinking about specific department rankings in certain fields, or resources, or professors. So why is it so important to court their opinions?</p>