<p>what are the most prestigious schools in the country.</p>
<p>While I am procrastinating, let's do one for the U.S. and the world.</p>
<p>1.
2.
3.
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
???</p>
<p>Caltech
MIT
the 8 Ivies
Stanford
Swarthmore
Amherst
Williams
Northwestern
Johns Hopkins
U Chicago
UC Berkeley</p>
<p>Ivies, Duke, Stanford,UChicago.</p>
<p>heres my top 20</p>
<ol>
<li>harvard</li>
<li>stanford</li>
<li>mit</li>
<li>caltech</li>
<li>yale</li>
<li>princeton</li>
<li>columbia</li>
<li>upenn</li>
<li>duke</li>
<li>berkeley</li>
<li>dartmouth</li>
<li>uchicago</li>
<li>northwestern</li>
<li>johns hopkins</li>
<li>brown</li>
<li>cornell</li>
<li>notre dame</li>
<li>georgetown</li>
<li>uva</li>
<li>ucla</li>
</ol>
<p>I'd be interested to see if someone could but together one for the world. I always wondered where IIB (for us Indians) ranked compared to the Ivy's.</p>
<p>What ever do you mean by "prestige?"</p>
<p>Prestige is SOOOO overated.</p>
<p>prestige is also relative to your cultural/geographical background, biases, and scope.</p>
<p>all the ivies, Stanford duke, johns hopkins, UC Berkeley, Northwestern, Michigan, Notre Dame, Chicago, MIT and Caltech in no specific order</p>
<p>horrible thread</p>
<p>worthless thread</p>
<p>The subject of "prestige" is often discussed on this forum, and usually more seriously than warranted. I see it as a fun subject, but one that can easily spiral out of control. At any rate, for all its worth, here we go...again!!!</p>
<p>I prefer grouping rather than rating. And to me, prestige can only be from the eye of the knowledgeable.</p>
<p>US UNIVERSITIES:
Group I:
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
Yale University</p>
<p>Group II:
Amherst College
Brown University
California Insititute of Technology
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
Swarthmore College
University of California-Berkeley
University of Chicago
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania
Williams College</p>
<p>Group III:
Bowdoin College
Bryn Mawr College
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon University
Claremont McKenna College
Georgetown University
Grinnell College
Harvey Mudd College
Haverford College
Middlebury College
Oberlin College
Pomona College
Rice University
Smith College
University of California-Los Angeles
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Washington University
Wellesley College
Weselyan University</p>
<p>Group IV:
Barnard College
Bates College
Boston College
Colby College
Colgate University
College of William and Mary
Emory University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Macalester College
Mount Holyoke College
New York University
Tufts University
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Notre Dame
University of Southern California
University of Texas-Austin</p>
<p>INTERNATIONAL:
Group I:
University of Cambridge
University of Oxford
University of Paris</p>
<p>Group II:
Ecole Polytechnique (France)
Imperial College (England)
London School of Economics and Political Science
Technical University of Munich (Germany)
University of Heidelberg (Germany)</p>
<p>Group III:
Edinburgh University (Scotland)
McGill University (Canada)
University College of London
University of Lyon (France)
University of Toronto
University of Zurich (Switzerland)</p>
<p>alexandre, how do u come up with those brackets. I don't really undertand, i mean it makes sense with the peer assessments, but I mean who is the ultimate authority in this matter. Honestly, to the majority of ppl, a school like Swarthmore is not prestigious in that many ppl do not even know of it. Academia is different i guess. Isn't there something to be said about getting that common "wow" from academia and the average person, who could be your employer. To an employer, is Swarthmore really going to be better than a Columbia? I actually know a girl who turned down columbia, brown, dartmouth, duke for swarthmore, purely a better fit for her.</p>
<p>Actually, the brackets I use are almost 100% derived from the peer asessment score. I personally am not qualify to rate universities, so I refer to those who actually know.</p>
<p>You make a reference to the "majority" of the people. I do not believe the majority of the people have an opinion worth considering. 80% of the people do not have a degree and 90% of the people who have degrees have degrees from third rate universities (Community Colleges or worse). So only 5% of the people out there have an education worth anything.</p>
<p>And it is not only academics who respects schools like Swarthmore. Most well educated and cultured people know of Swarthmore.</p>
<p>Alexandre, I'm flattered by your Bell Curve preferences which you adapted from one I had posted frequently on CC over the past year. I take it as a compliment, although I disagree with some of your revisions. However, some of them are provocative and worth consideration. In the meantime, thank you.</p>
<p>Might move Notre Dame up 1 bracket, and would add Brandeis, Bucknell, Holy Cross and Trinity to bracket 4 -these schools have higher peer scores than Boston College.</p>
<p>Like I said, this is a fun exercise, not worth taking too seriously. I am sure I left out many worthy schools from group IV.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Actually, the brackets I use are almost 100% derived from the peer asessment score. I personally am not qualify to rate universities, so I refer to those who actually know.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think 'those people' actually know either. LOL. I've met and talk to so many professors, including 4 Nobel laureates (ain't I lucky :)). They don't give a damn about the ranking, they either know as good as the passionate student who is looking for school, or they just count the number of their friends in the other schools. Completely bull! Sorry, but I deem myself more knowledgeable than many of those who took the USNEWS survey.</p>
<p>rtkysg, I agree that 10 or 50 or even 100 academics may be wrong or biased. But thousands? Like you, I also know much about universities and I find the peer assessment score at the top levels to be quite acurate.</p>
<p>When the survey is taken only among academia which have similar voting pattern, one wrong cause and the aggregate result would be biased.</p>
<p>Notice that this bias is caused by the pattern of the group. For example, prestige definition between students and professors would often be different.
While prestige among the professors would mean the number of the faculty they <em>befriend with</em> and honor at the other schools, the prestige among the students would mean how difficult and distinct to get to the school.</p>