New University Prestige Rankings

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I've come up with another rankings (gasp*) that illustrates the prestige of a university. This is based on the combination of PA scores and counselor rankings. I used these counselor rankings because I mean what would a counselor know? The counselors obviously haven't been to each schools. They haven't visited every lecture, participated in student activities, etc.
All they know is the "name brand" and the "regalness" of a university. (
Aha! Harvard is the best of the best obviously. It's the hardest to get into. I don't need a ranking to tell me that" - A high school counselor)
I used PA scores because the opinions of the academic community obviously matter. I also used selectivity. Exclusivity and prestige correlate highly. So I broke USNWR’s selectivity into tiers. Every 5 universities were places in a tier (top 1-5 as 4.9, top 6-10 as 4.8, etc)
I took the average, and I came up with a ranking based on prestige. And I must say I’m quite pleased with the results. I feel you should refer to these rankings whenever you debate on whether X is more prestigious than Y. </p>

<p>(Prestige Score) US News top 30 PA scores/ HS counselor scores/ Selectivity Rankings (scaled)</p>

<p>4.9 Harvard 4.9 | 4.9 | 4.9
4.9 MIT 4.9 | 4.9 | 4.9
4.9 Princeton 4.9 | 4.9 | 4.9
4.86 Yale 4.8 | 4.9 |4.9
4.83 Stanford 4.9 | 4.9 |4.7</p>

<h2>4.8 Caltech 4.6 | 4.6 |4.9 </h2>

<p>4.73 Columbia 4.6 | 4.8 | 4.8
4.63 Brown 4.4 | 4.8 | 4.7
4.63 Cornell 4.5 | 4.8 | 4.6<br>
4.63 Penn 4.5 | 4.6 | 4.8
4.6 Duke 4.4 | 4.7 | 4.7
4.56 Dartmouth 4.3 | 4.7 | 4.7<br>
4.56 Johns Hopkins 4.5 | 4.8 | 4.4
4.56 UC Berkeley 4.7 / 4.6 | 4.4
4.53 Chicago 4.6 | 4.5 | 4.5
4.53 Northwestern 4.4 | 4.6 | 4.6</p>

<h2>4.5 Georgetown 4.1 | 4.8 | 4.6</h2>

<p>4.43 Wash U 4.1 | 4.4 |4.8
4.33 Carnegie Mellon 4.2 | 4.6 | 4.2
4.33 Notre Dame 3.9 | 4.6 | 4.5
4.33 Rice 4.1 | 4.4 | 4.5
4.3 Michigan 4.4 | 4.4 | 4.1
4.3 Vanderbilt 4.1 | 4.5 | 4.3
4.26 Emory 4.0 | 4.4 | 4.4
4.23 UCLA 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.2<br>
4.23 USC 4.0 | 4.4 | 4.3
4.2 UVA 4.3 | 4.3 | 4.0
4.16 Tufts 3.6 | 4.5 | 4.4</p>

<h2>4.06 UNC Chapel Hill 4.1 | 4.4 | 3.7</h2>

<p>3.83 Wake Forest 3.5 | 4.3 | 3.7 </p>

<p>I've broken these universities into Tiers. Tier 1 consists of the HYPSMC. Results show these universities are a little step higher than the others in terms of prestige, however not "other worldly" compared to tier 2.
Most prestigious public is UC Berkeley. Second most prestigious is Michigan. I hope RML and rjkofnovi are satisfied.</p>

2

<p>Things to consider:</p>

<p>1) UC Berkeley is definitely as prestigious as the top privates. But its a little lower than the Ivy Leagues in terms of prestige. It’s selectivity is limiting it. But nevertheless, it does well in rankings. In other areas, it rivals HYPSM easily (PA scores).</p>

<p>2) Harvard, MIT, and Princeton are the most prestigious. They are little bit more than Yale, Stanford, and Caltech, which isn’t surprising. Stanford always had that “laid back” feel to it. Caltech is not largely targeted at. Harvard and Princeton are always a little bit better than Yale. Little bit. Also remember, Batman went to Princeton and IronMan went to MIT. Bush went to Yale. So it makes sense. </p>

<p>3) The non-Ivy universities that lay in between the range of the Ivy League are MIT, Stanford, Caltech and Duke. These four are non-Ivies that are as prestigious as the Ivy League.</p>

<p>4) Cornell is not the least prestigious Ivy. It’s Dartmouth.</p>

<p>5) Northwestern and UChicago are equal in prestige. </p>

<p>6) WashU, Notre Dame, Rice, Vandy, and Emory are a little below in prestige compared to Tier 2, but they do pretty well in certain individual areas.</p>

3

<p>Who the heck is supposed to care?? Colleges earn real prestige based on their results which include the relative success of their graduates, the contributions to knowledge that they make, and their overall contribution to society. What some podunk counselor thinks is about the worst indicator I could think of. Most of them never went to a top tier college nor do they know much about them except maybe their admissions requirements.</p>

4

<p>Contrary to what you believe, a lot of people care about prestige. It’s a confidence boost to many. And people like confidence boosts. </p>

<p>Many of CC’s arguments stem from “Is X more prestigious than Y? Is it?”
I feel I’ve made an objective table on a topic that many consider subjective. I don’t think there’s anything technically wrong with it. </p>

<p>Contributions to society is one thing. We’re not discussing that. And these “podunk counselors” are counselors for America’s top 100 high schools. They are highly educated and intelligent.
Learn to respect knowledgeable people who help students achieve their dreams.</p>

5

<p>You have way too much time on your hands. Presumably you are at MIT and your continuous attempts to make it second to Harvard is quite pathetic. Shouldnt the course work at MIT find better use of your time, no? We all know MIT is a great school, along with plenty others. Please, please give this a break.</p>

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<p>This is so pointless.</p>

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<p>so therefore shouldn’t you have five 4.8’s and five 4.7’s in the selectivity rankings?</p>

<p>take some time and count how many selectivity 4.8 and 4.7’s you have listed</p>

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<p>^Some of the numbers pertained to LACs which I ignored. That’s why my count is lower than 5. I can give you the entire list if you want.</p>

<p>@smwhat: What?? Most of the list I got from xiggi actually. I just put in the selectivity factor and calculated the average. It took 10 min.</p>

<p>@manarois: I don’t understand why you find this so pointless? Is it because your school isn’t doing as well as you think? Not my problem. It is what it is. </p>

<p>What you can do is tell me why my methadology is flawed. I’ll try to respond with intelligence.</p>

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<p>^ Should what some high school counselors think be equally weighted to what college presidents and academics think? 100% peer assessment, like USNWR did in their earlier rankings, is the best way to go. :D</p>

10

<p>This is really hilarious and seriously flawed. </p>

<p>First off, the opinions of college counselors and other schools, who in themselves will lower the rank of their piers, is futile when most kids care about jobs. These institutions don’t provide jobs (unless you are a professor…i guess).</p>

<p>Second, some of these have HUGE disparities. This is especially true between high school counselors and other schools ranking each other. Thus, the weight of one group pulls the average of the other way down. It doesn’t say much other than one group sees a school better than the other. Interestingly, some of those in the “third tier” have favorable pier assessments as those in higher tiers.</p>

<p>Lastly, selectivity is seriously flawed. The reason is because it’s premised upon the number who apply/the number accepted.</p>

<p>MrPrince, you go to MIT, and so I am going to assume you know math. But obviously it’s the numerator that matters the most. Thus, an institution becomes selective on the basis that many students apply. Yet many students apply to just “see if they can get in.”</p>

<p>The fundamental flaw is that the students that actually are accepted can be way different. Take for this year, JHU accepted LESS students than Upenn. But Upenn’s acceptance rate is LOWER because more students apply.</p>

<p>Indeed, U of Chicago has a surge in applicants last year which made their acceptance rate go from like 27% to 19% or something. Does a school improve that much over a year in terms of selectivity?</p>

<p>Interestingly, a lot of these institutions actually accept about the same number of students as the year before. What changes is the number of applicants. Schools also project their yield (hence why Curtis accepts 8 students or Harvard about 2400).</p>

<p>To me, the best measure would be to see what potential employers view as good schools. But this is tricky if not impossible.</p>

<p>Truly, at the end of the day, it doesn’t even matter. What matters, as the poster above said, is what you make of your college experience and the relative success of graduates.</p>

11

<p>Prestige to me depends on these:

  1. Exclusivity
  2. Public opinion</p>

<p>I take care of exclusivity through the USNWR selectivity rankings.</p>

<p>Public opinion is interesting. I take care of this through BOTH counselor rankings (which reflect the opinions of the high school and bits of the undergrad)
and
PA scores (which reflect the opinions of academic individuals)</p>

<p>Some people may consider PA scores to be “more important” because opinions from important people are more valuable. But I won’t give in to such misguided sense of elitism. And that’s not how this country works. We take the opinions of everyone.</p>

<p>Obviously USNWR includes counselor rankings in their website. If these rankings were bogus, then they wouldn’t even be posted let alone included in USNWR methodology. </p>

<p>Counselor opinions come from counselors of various top high schools in the USA. Many top high schools prepare their students to not only succed in academics and social life, but also feed them into top universities. Counselors have plenty of knowledge and experience dealing with universities.
Their opinions are definitely valuable.</p>

<p>Remember, my rankings don’t reflect academic strength. They don’t reflect research quality/quantity of any of the sort. They don’t reflect the number of beer cans used on a Friday night.
They simply reflect “popularity” or prestige or “name worth”
This definitely matters to people.</p>

12

<p>@buzzers: You have great points. Especially this:

If only collegeconfidential threads didn’t have prestige battles I would believe this.</p>

13

<p>Well, for starters, I’m not in college yet. I didn’t even apply to a single one of the schools on your list, and if I did, I sure wouldn’t give a damn where my school fell on your list.</p>

<p>It’s pointless because prestige is worthless. It tells you absolutely nothing about the actual quality of education offered, which I believe is the whole point of a university. To educate. These rankings are only worth anything to people who care more about who other people think they are than who they actually are.</p>

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<p>buzzers, the “selectivity” rankings used in USNWR is not just acceptance rate - it also includes SAT/ACT scores and Top 10%. I would assume that Mr. Prince used the USNWR selectivity index rankings for this analysis.</p>

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<p>I have actually found where a “recruiter assessment” ranking list is available and has been actually used. Let me know if you would like to find out about it.</p>

<p>There is danger in using what company recruiters think, however. As an example in commenting on the top MBA Graduate Schools, recruiters that have been frustrated at getting Harvard and Stanford MBA’s to work for them will rank other top ten schools ahead of them.</p>

16

<p>Your list seems to be in the ballpark, but I would subdivide Groups 2 and 3 into A and B sections, because those at the top are clearly not lateral equivalents to those at the bottom (i.e., toss-ups for those admitted to both).</p>

<p>Of course, one could merely take the acceptance rate list, from lowest to highest, leaving out the highly-specialized art/music/architecture-only schools and get as good or better a perceived prestige list.</p>

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<p>If you want public opinion, these are the results:
<a href=“Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public”>http://www.gallup.com/poll/9109/harvard-number-one-university-eyes-public.aspx&lt;/a&gt;

</p>

<p>If you want educated public opinion, these are the results:

</p>

<p>Practically same list between the two, except 'furd is closer to Harvard and ND drops out.</p>

18

<p>@manarius: So tell me, my friend. Assuming your major in computer engineering, which unviersity would you pick?
UIUC? Or Yale?</p>

<p>Assume they cost equally.</p>

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<p>^^^^nice…lets see what manarius has to say…</p>

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<p>UCBChemE, you may use that list if you sincerely believe Ohio State is more prestigious than Columbia.</p>

<p>I can’t quantify the results they obtained. Nor am I going to ask how they managed to tally up those abyssmal results.</p>