<p>In the past, I have been confused about all of the discussions about how prestigious the different colleges were. While reading such a thread today, I think I have it figured out. First off, discussions of prestige are not a real big topic once you get out of high school. Doctors are not comparing where they went to med school. Doctorates are not making disparaging remarks about how the author of a paper is only at a public school. For adults outside of the academic world, the names of half the ivies are not known and prestige is measured by how many games the basketball/football team has won.</p>
<p>The point of my post is that prestige on CC is based on how much a high school student's friends will be impressed by his/her acceptance. Prestige when it is measured in this sense is a tangible quantity. In this sense, who would agree with the following:</p>
<p>1) The Ivies and MIT.
2) Colleges you know are good but are not Ivies or MIT: Stanford, Duke, NU, JHU, UCLA, Berkeley, UNC-CH
3) Colleges you know are good but don't have names that you had heard of until junior year: UChicago, WUSTL, Emory, Rice, Tufts, Michigan, Wisconsin, UVA, Georgetown, Caltech</p>
<p>Remember that the list has no meaning other than how much it will impress a high school student, but how would other people rank the colleges using this criteria?</p>
<p>Huh????? Colleges you never heard of before junior years? Doctors not comparing where they went to school? I suppose of their heads ave been under pillows for decades.</p>
<p>You can hardly pick up a main stream magazine without seeing a story about the race for the ivies. Law and order even nhad an episode on it.</p>
<p>So why don't we stop the silly threads trying to 0prove whatever it's important to oneself to believe.</p>
<p>The race for the ivies is done by high school students (and some of their parents). The fact that there is a race doesn't affect my remarks on prestige. I missed that Law and Order episode.</p>
<p>I am talking about prestige as something that you can impress your friends with when you tell thim where you were accepted. Some high school students got into it a little earlier than junior year, but substitute whichever year is appropriate for your public/private hs.</p>
<p>I am confused by the remark about doctors caring where other doctors graduated from med school. Are you saying that they do care? That reminds me of the joke: What do you call somebody who graduated last in his med school class? Doctor.</p>
<p>The threads about Hopkins being more prestigious than Emory are not silly? The only way I can make sense of them is using this definition of prestige.</p>
<p>Dufus3709 - I can't really comment on medical school, but I have come to learn a bit about grad school prestige, due to the fact that the bulk of my friends are PhD students or heading in that direction. For those persuing a doctorate in order to land a professorship, prestige of the university's program does matter. Note that I said of the "program," not the university. Grad school prestige is very departmentally specific. What may be a great school for anthropology may be unremarkable for biology. And this relative prestige doesn't necessarily follow how the school's undergraduate program is preceived. Those PhD students who want to be well respected in their fields want to work with others who have already achieved this level of respect. It becomes very competitive at the top and it can come down to where you studied and - most importantly - who you studied under.</p>
<p>I know the OP was really focused on undergrad "prestige" which is another thing entirely, but as you did mention doctorates, I thought I'd toss in my two cents.</p>
<p>To clear up confusion, dufus wrote: "For adults outside of the academic world, the names of half the ivies are not known and prestige is measured by how many games the basketball/football team has won." He agrees that academic prestige is important within academe.</p>
<p>gadgets: I agree with everything you said. The academic world is like the military world with ranks. Where you got your doctorate is very important, and as you said, the prestige factor of the different colleges is specific to your area of study. I find it hard to add anything to what you said other than it is impossible to get a job teaching at a university if you received your doctorate from a less prestigious university. You can tell the pecking order by looking at where the professors graduated from. Few people will go into academia of course, and it is the grad degree that matters. This would affect medical doctors in academia, but not in general practice.</p>
<p>Like the military world, the spouses inherit the rank of their husband/wife. A major's wife outranks a captain's wife.</p>
<p>I am curious - how does attending a school of far less prestige (I'm talking, um, Randolph Macon here) essentially impact hopes of attending law school or grad school.</p>
<p>Randolph Macon is definitely the lowest ranked school on my list, but they offered me quite a nice scholarship and a personalized accpetance letter. GAH, I didn't realize the agonizing over which school would start so soon....</p>
<p><em>sigh</em> the op wasn't "ranking" the schools. the op is trying to express the point that the only people on this board who ask questions/care about prestige are 16 year old kids in high school. He just listed probably the best 20 or so schools in the country and then split them into groups on how well the average person would know them.</p>
<p>schools like harvard and mit have instant name recognition amongst most people...most probably because there have been movies and tv shows featuring them. most people have never heard of williams, but no one on this board is going to say that, atleast for undergrad, harvard gives you the better education than williams - but everyone will agree that harvard is "more prestigious". other schools most people know are schools with great sports programs - duke, penn state, notre dame, miami. Do you think most people would think duke is a great school if it weren't a basketball powerhouse?</p>
<p>ive tried to say this in other posts. people are like "omg i have to go to an ivy league." its so stupid. if the ivy league was sooooo special, everyone could name all 8 schools at the drop of a hat. but i would venture to say that the overwhelming majority of people cant do it.</p>
<p>the fact is, atleast for undergrad, the ivy league (which i would like to stress...is just a sports conference, and a crappy one at that), stanford, *insert whatever other school you think is infinitely better than every other school," etc. is no better than any of the top 25 schools, sans the exception of a few majors (engineering/business...and thats mostly due to job placement). You're not going to get a huge leg up with your b.a. in english from yale vs. someone with a b.a. in english from emory. no employer is going to say "oh you went to emory, get out of my office." If you go to a top 25 school and you do well, you will be successful out of college.</p>
<p>Its still "if you go to a top 25 school" mentality</p>
<p>There are people that go to those schools who fail at life, the school is not the reason people succeed or fail- its the person</p>
<p>I know some extremely successful people that never went to college, I know some pretty pathetic people with 4 year degrees</p>
<p>Most of the successful people in this country DID NOT go to an Ivy or one of the top 25 schools. There are a lot of successful people who went to a lot of different colleges. Only so many can go to the top schools, with tens of millions of students in colleges every year, and say, with the top 25, even with 10000 students each (and that is a high guesstimate, that is 250,000 is a small percentage, so the other schools must be doing something right</p>
<p>lets not put down prestige. I went to my UPenn interview the other day, and one of the first things my interviewer said was how going to wharton opened up so any doors, how everyone is so impressed and how people treat you differently when they find ou where you went. She said she wished she could put it on her business card.</p>
<p>It is kind of sad, don't you think that where you went to school counts for more than what you know</p>
<p>Presitige means that while you may have worked hard, and deserved to be there, you were damn lucky, because alot of equally or more qualifed students couldn't go there due to a variety of reasons, so if you want to equate prestige with luck of the draw, fine</p>
<p>i say top 25 schools, as i do believe there are tiers of schools. when i say top 25, i guess, im not suggesting there are 25 schools that are the best, and no. 26 is worse. i'm also not referring to like...usnews top 25. I'm just saying that there are like a group of schools, not distinguished by their athletic divison, that are considered the best. i think 25 is a rough estimate of whats considered tier one. it could be 30, it could be 22, but i do believe there are, albiet somewhat vague, separations in quality. but in that top top tier of 25 or so schools, the distinctions are soo vague that you can't say that one is better than the other.</p>
<p>also, i said that in engineering and business, there are distinctions. most people consider wharton the best business school, and most people will agree that mit, caltech, berkley, and stanford offer the best engineering programs. </p>
<p>also, your interviewer is a jerk if they honestly believe "i wish i could put where i went to school on my business card." what a shallow person, pfft.</p>
<p>"lets not put down prestige. I went to my UPenn interview the other day, and one of the first things my interviewer said was how going to wharton opened up so any doors, how everyone is so impressed and how people treat you differently when they find ou where you went"</p>
<p>I attended a fundraising gala with my childhood mentor a few years ago, and at one point everyone was gathered around listening to her talk about something she had done during her college days. She told them that she had attended UPenn. She was called away in the middle of the conversation but the group kept talking (reasonably well-educated, affluent donors), and it was obvious that they weren't aware that there's a distinction between the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I went to my UPenn interview the other day, and one of the first things my interviewer said was how going to wharton opened up so any doors, how everyone is so impressed and how people treat you differently when they find ou where you went.
[/quote]
Wow, the UPenn interviewer said that. You need to understand salesmanship a little better before you go into a car dealership. I realize that the interviewer doesn't do it as a paying job, but it is their function (as happy volunteer alumi) to sell you on the college.</p>
<p>just in general, for those who want to bash the OP and others, realize that "what is prestigious" is relative and that "how important is prestige" is also relative. </p>
<p>but i do think as you grow older, for most positions, prestige of college doesn't really matter. it's YOU and what you can do that matters. there's only a few jobs or positions that require the need for consistent mention of prestige. </p>
<p>but obviously most people who are still in high school probably can't understand that so just wait till you get an internship or a job when you're in college and i think you'll start understanding.</p>
<p>
[quote]
how does attending a school of far less prestige (I'm talking, um, Randolph Macon here) essentially impact hopes of attending law school or grad school.
[/quote]
This is more a question of facilities than of prestige. Two factors are key into getting into med school: MCAT scores and gpa. You should try to find out from the school how many pre-med students from the college are accepted into medical schools and their the average MCAT. Med schools take applicants from everywhere. I am positive that R-M sends some people to med schools, but I just don't know about their acceptance rate. </p>
<p>I am including a list of medical colleges along with the average MCAT score and average gpa of the people that they accept.</p>
<p>wow, everyone who just went to go and bash my interviewer, the whole business card thing was just a joke by her, trust me, not full of herself. She was just using it as a bit of a hyperbole as to how wharton prestige has helped her in the past. calm down.</p>
<p>totally agree with dufus, prestige shouldn't matter, but it does. my perfect school happens to be very prestigious where I live, which honestly, was a plus for me. :)</p>