<p>Most people would pick Brown PLME over any school, just saying.</p>
<p>You’d be amazed at how many people confuse CalTech and CalPoly. Yes, even Californians.</p>
<p>One is a teeny tiny private research institution in Pasadena.
The other is a pair ~20,000 person state universities, one in Pomona and the other in San Luis Obispo.</p>
<p>But I guess, other than that, they’re pretty similar. :p</p>
<p>Where I live I swear people think the University of Arkansas is Ivy League.</p>
<p>I’ve heard of Grinnell, know about Northeastern, about Pomona and the sister schools, probably most schools except REALLY REALLY obscure ones, from this site and the extensive research we did for my D. I think in my D’s entire graduating class of 500, there were probably 10 kids (that’s being generous) who had heard of Tufts. Our Saludatorian visited there and it was on her short list but she got a full ride at TCU so she didn’t go there.</p>
<p>Nobody has ever heard of my D’s school either, but it’s an excellent school and the graduates do very well, and the alumnae do have a funny way of running into each other in planes and random places somehow. In fact, last summer my d and I met a woman with her two daughters in the dressing room at Target and not only was one of her daughters (plus a son who wasn’t there) a recent graduate, but she was in the same major as my D and get this - had lived in THE SAME DORM ROOM. lol!!!</p>
<p>We kind of like seeing who knows about her school, actually. Shows you who pays attention, has an interest, versus those who think the reason colleges exist is to make football games. Since her school doesn’t even have a football team (very strong athletics in other areas but why bother having a football team when you are in the same town as the Longhorns…) most people here don’t know about it. I think the average Joe knows schools because of football and references to Ivy Leagues in movies.</p>
<p>If you care about how people think, just say that Tufts is one of the “little Ivies,” along with Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Bates, Swarthmore, Haverford, Middlebury etc.</p>
<p>[Little</a> Ivies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ivies]Little”>Little Ivies - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>These are among the most selective schools anywhere. (U. of Chicago too!)</p>
<p>Tufts is very well known here in Massachusetts as a top school, but gets eclipsed because Harvard and MIT are nearby, as well as BU, Northeastern, Brandeis, Wellesley and many other schools. This does not diminish its quality whatsoever, just camouflages it a little.</p>