<p>What are the most prestigious schools that are known internationally? I've heard in, for example, Asia, that lots more people hold places like USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Cornell, Michigan, Georgetown, etc. in higher regard than schools like Northwestern, Brown, Dartmouth, etc. that are all universally considered to be more prestigious in the US. What are more places like that? Everyone will know Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT, but what are the rest of the places that are really well known throughout the world?</p>
<p>No one cares about the rest of world. Welcome to America. :p</p>
<p>Almost every educated person in Europe has heard of Harvard. Then random educated people have heard of random top US schools such as MIT, Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia, Michigan, Cornell, Penn, Northwestern and Chicago. Most engineers, computer science majors, and math and science geeks have heard of Caltech and CMU. Surprisingly, Duke, Brown and Dartmouth aren’t all that known in many countries in Europe.</p>
<p>Duke is extremely well-known in England. I got a lot of “wows” when I said I went to school there the last time I went to London.</p>
<p>very few schools have international brands besides -</p>
<p>harvard, yale, princeton, columbia, mit and stanford (and maybe Berkeley). beyond that it dips in and out depending what country you are in. georgetown is huge in london, but you probably wouldn’t know about them in moscow.</p>
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That is a understatement. The pets in a house of every educated person in Europe know Harvard… and to a certain extent know Berkeley. :)</p>
<p>NYU is more well-known abroad than several of the colleges already mentioned.</p>
<p>“Almost every educated person in Europe has heard of Harvard.”</p>
<p>Almost every educated person anywhere and everywhere in the world has heard of Harvard.</p>
<p>My friend who is a professor went to Asia to teach…he’s a graduate from USC, but he said people there never heard of USC…he said they kept asking if it was like UCLA and UC Berkeley. I’ve also heard that the UCLA trademark is licensed out in Asia.</p>
<p>I agree with the others, Harvard is probably the most well known around the world.</p>
<p>U.S. News & World Report provides a world universities ranking based on their own methodology.
[World’s</a> Best Universities: Top 400 - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-universities/2010/09/21/worlds-best-universities-top-400-.html]World’s”>http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-universities/2010/09/21/worlds-best-universities-top-400-.html)
Of course a “prestigious” university can only be that way, if your specific audience perceives it as such.</p>
<p>I would say Harvard and Stanford are the most well known in Asia and Europe, followed closely by MIT, Yale, Berkeley, and Cornell. Princeton, Dartmouth, Duke, Williams, etc. are widely known among high school students though. Never been to Africa, so I don’t know which ones are well known there.</p>
<p>In Korea (where I live), the only school EVERYONE knows about is Harvard and Stanford (a famous singer graduated from there). I say 60-70% know about Yale and maybe 20-30% know about Princeton. All high school students, however, know about the rest of the ivies + Duke + MIT, etc.</p>
<p>Of course, it begs the question as to why “familiar” and “prestigious” are treated as the same thing when they aren’t, and it also begs the question as to why one would care about the opinions of people who aren’t particularly informed about colleges in the US and who therefore rely on hearsay rather than real information. “Oooh, look, they’re impressed by college X.” So what? It’s all based on hearsay and only bits and pieces of information. What kind of person cares about those opinions?</p>
<p>In my experience, many Europeans have never even heard of Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, or Cornell, but they all know Berkeley and HYPS.</p>
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This forum’s collective inability to face, let alone answer that question, is the driving force behind much of the threads on CC, isn’t it?</p>
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<p>A perfect example. All these people “know” about these schools – because they’ve heard of them. But there are a whole host of schools that are excellent, including LAC’s, that they don’t know about. They’re not informed. Which is fine – I couldn’t name a single Korean university either. </p>
<p>But then, no high school students in Korea are making college decisions based on impressing Americans who don’t know anything about colleges in Korea. So what’s the point of high school students making college decisions based on impressing Koreans who don’t know anything about colleges in the US?</p>
<p>^^^Yeah, what she said!</p>
<p>^ ^You’re quite right that there’s a huge difference between schools that some people have heard about and schools that are less well-known, but that are excellent nonetheless.</p>
<p>However, in Korea and in many other areas of Asia, the elite American universities (and, even LACs) are well-known among high school students from educated, professional-class families. They follow the rankings and their prestige obsession is not very different from what is seen on CC. Along with this, their skewed perception of the distribution of excellence is probably not much different than that found among Americans.
<a href=“https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/world/asia/27seoul.html[/url]”>https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/world/asia/27seoul.html</a></p>
<p>I don’t know. I prefer my kids to go to places where I know the education will be first-rate. IF other people know about those schools, that’s icing on the cake, and IF they don’t - well, tant pis pour eux as they say in France. It seems so many of you start from the other perspective – what will impress people first and foremost. It’s embarrassing for you. Some of you really need to think about why other people’s opinions of your schools are more important than your own evaluation of the opportunities and caliber.</p>
<p>For China, I would say HYPSM + Berkeley + NYU. But for high school students, most of them will know more, most likely the Ivy League, Duke, Northwestern, UMich, etc. But the lack of knowledge of LACs in China is pretty high. Most people don’t know anything about Amherst, Williams, and the likes.</p>