<p>I guess all professors have many friends at Harvard and MIT and few friends at Podunk U! LOL Students are clueless and you know it. What students think makes up popularity, not academic quality.</p>
<p>Many are clueless but many are not. Students in the know will not associate prestige to popularity, and to the lesser extent, academic quality. They link prestige to the distinction and the wow response. This pattern is much less seen in academia (among professors), but it still is an important aspect in defining prestige, something not included the USNEWS peer assessment report. Hence peer assessment would count perhaps no more than 50% when linked to prestige.</p>
<p>Emory should not be in the same category as Bates College or UT-Austin. It has more prestige than most of the schools you have listed in group III (eg. Vanderbilt).</p>
<p>Like I said rtkysg, in cultured and highly educated circles, the only "wow" involves academic strength. A university that is amazing in almost every field of study will impress the top lawyers, the top doctors, the top engineers the CEOs of top companies, World Leaders, leading academics and intellectuals etc...</p>
<p>Podunk University almost made my prestige list. Here is the link to the website. I recommend reading the history of Podunk.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.podunk.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.podunk.com/</a></p>
<p>Don't these threads get a little tiresome after a while? :)</p>
<p>That said, instead of making yet another list, here are my true "wow" factors for degrees:</p>
<ul>
<li>HYPS A.B.</li>
<li>Yale / Harvard J.D.</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins / Harvard M.D.</li>
<li>Harvard / Wharton M.B.A.</li>
<li>MIT Ph.D in engineering / math / computer science</li>
</ul>
<p>others non-degree:</p>
<p>Rhodes Scholarship (Oxford)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Like I said rtkysg, in cultured and highly educated circles, the only "wow" involves academic strength. A university that is amazing in almost every field of study will impress the top lawyers, the top doctors, the top engineers the CEOs of top companies, World Leaders, leading academics and intellectuals etc...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I have to disagree Alexander, not only academic strength, but also how selective a school is (which connotatively implies how distinct its students are), are the main aspects for the 'wow' in high educated circles. Notice that Kellog is not as prestigious as HBS, eventhough its program is at least as good. And yes, this view prevails among professionals, nevertheless this is something excluded from the USNEWS peer assessment score.</p>
<p>US only </p>
<p>1.Stanford
2.MIT
3.Princeton
4.Harvard
5.Yale
6. Caltech
7.Amherst
8.Williams
9.Swarthmore
10.Dartmouth
11.Columbia
12. Duke
13.UPenn
14. UChicago
15.Brown
16.Northwestern
17. Cornell
18. UC B
19. Rice
20. JHU
21. UCLA
22. Notre Dame
23. UVA
24. Georgetown</p>
<p>No one knows about Rice (on the national level).</p>
<p>Rice has an amazing student body, but there programs are pretty weak as I do not think they have any programs in the top 10, maybe some engineering disciplines. For example, on the WSJ Feeder list, Rice came in 20, really good, but also was next to places like Bowdoin, and Rice only has 750 per class, and coupled with a great student body, should have definetely been in the top 10-15 in that survey, as it easier for smaller schools to do better on that survey.</p>
<p>how many times are we going to do this?</p>
<p>As long as there is a new crop of high school graduates and their parents.</p>
<p>Internationally speaking, I think a lot of people outside of the U.S. hold the Indian Institute of Technology in higher prestige than MIT, Stanford, the Ivies, etc..</p>
<p>I like to think of it this way.</p>
<p>Prestige: ORIGIN mid 17th cent.(in the sense [illusion, conjuring trick] ): from French, literally illusion, glamour, from late Latin praestigium illusion, from Latin praestigiae (plural) conjuring tricks. The transference of meaning occurred by way of the sense [dazzling influence, glamour,] at first depreciatory.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Internationally speaking, I think a lot of people outside of the U.S. hold the Indian Institute of Technology in higher prestige than MIT, Stanford, the Ivies, etc..
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Would those "lot of people oustide the US" happen to reside in India by any chance?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I have to disagree Alexander, not only academic strength, but also how selective a school is (which connotatively implies how distinct its students are), are the main aspects for the 'wow' in high educated circles.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree with that. I would also point out that the sheer difficulty of the program is also a contributory factor. For example, I am personally more impressed with somebody who completed an engineering or a science degree at MIT or Caltech than somebody who completed an Art History major at Stanford. I think most people would be.</p>
<p>But sakky, would any non-science/engineering degree impress you more than the top science/engineering degrees would?</p>
<p>Sakky, we are not talking about the most prestigious fields of study, we are talking about the most prestigious universities. In your case, you would probably be more impressed with a CS or EECS student at CMU than with a Music major from Yale. But is CMU more prestigious than Yale?</p>
<p>
[quote]
would any non-science/engineering degree impress you more than the top science/engineering degrees would
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I would argue that a degree from a service academy, even a humanities degree, would impress me more than an engineering degree from many top schools. Of course what is impressive in that case is not really the course of study itself, but rather the simple survival of the service academy lifestyle. </p>
<p>It's a sad generalization that I have to make regarding tech vs. nontech majors. Yet the fact is, tech majors, for whatever reason, generally seem to be more difficult than are nontech majors. At no school is engineering/science considered the 'dumb jock' majors filled with students who weren't good enough to graduate in something else. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky, we are not talking about the most prestigious fields of study, we are talking about the most prestigious universities.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yeah, but you should be talking about the prestigious fields of study along with the prestigious universities, because ultimately they are all intertwined. Is a MIT degree in Literature prestigious? You tell me.</p>
<p>That's an entirely different thread. This thread is about universities, no major or individuals. On a separate note, I did not realize you had Lit majors at MIT! LOL</p>