<p>deleted post, sry.</p>
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<p>This is absolutely incorrect. First, given the smaller nature of Stanford GSB’s class in addition to its inherent strength in the tech industry via its proximity to Silicon Valley, their applicant pool from the outset tends to be a self-selecting pool of candidates who are already very interested in technology / entreupreunership, etc. Thus, for those candidates with a tech-leaning, I’d agree that Stanford trumps Wharton (and Harvard). So I’d expect its yield to be extraordinarily high.</p>
<p>However, conversely, for those candidates with a strong interest in Finance / Wall Street (i-banking, PE, etc.) Wharton would be at least a no. 1 or no. 2 choice regardless of who its going up against.</p>
<p>In the overall picture, Wharton also adds an additional market presence on the back of its no. 1 ranked undergrad business program, and therefore, I give the edge to Wharton.</p>
<p>Finally, add to that Wharton’s alliance with the no. 1 international b-school, INSEAD, and you really can’t beat Wharton’s international presence / profile as evidenced by its recent no. 1 ranking in FT’s Global MBA ranking (in fact, Wharton has been ranked no. 1 three years straight, '07, '06, '05).</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/campus/alliance/[/url]”>http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/campus/alliance/</a></p>
<p>I think everyone on this thread is misinterpreting the meaning of prestige. My interpretation of prestige is that you, as a student of ____ University, can go back to your high school and tell the students that you attend this university and they will say “wow!” Of course this varies by region, but overall it would be:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Notre Dame (no bias, this is not an academic ranking, just prestige)</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>UVA</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>UNC</li>
<li>Columbia/Brown/Dartmouth/Cornell/Penn</li>
<li>NYU</li>
</ol>
<p>unfortunately this has little bearing on actual school quality, whether it is undergrad or grad, except that these 20 schools are all good. there are better schools than some of them that are not ranked of course (such as all LACs, UChicago, Caltech, Northwestern, WashU, Hopkins…) but the average person at a high school would have never heard of those schools. This is the true meaning of prestige.</p>
<p>Was this the Mary, Mother of God, High School of Catholic Indoctrination by any chance? At my high school (in California, admittedly) Notre Dame wouldn’t break the top 50.</p>
<p>I went to a public school in NY</p>
<p>The fact is, everybody knows Notre Dame, so to the Average Joe, ND would get much more name recognition than say, Dartmouth or Brown.</p>
<p>Also, the Service academies are very prestigious to your average person. If you say that Bob is going to Michigan and Jim is going to Navy, I would be much more impressed with Jim. Army/Navy are easily top 10 in prestige.</p>
<p>They might recognize it for having a good basketball team or whatever, but that doesn’t mean they think it’s a good school. The sports schools tend to be big publics with weak academics so there is are bad associations, fair or not - I know I never thought Duke was a good school until I saw US News. If you are actually on the team maybe they’ll be impressed.</p>
<p>But Notre Dame is not a big public, in fact it is ranked 19 in USNWR, so it is no slouch academically.
You yourself said that you didn’t recognize Duke as a good school until you saw US news. Does that mean that you would rank it lower, simply because it is known for its basketball?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>yeah, no bias. i’ve often heard of HYPSM + ND…</p>
<p>not.</p>
<p>Catholicism + Football + competitive admissions = utter holiness and prestige in the eyes of many in my neck of the woods. I would actually rate ND above S, M, and P.</p>
<p>(A bit earlier I gave my own take on the top ten most prestigious schools from the point of view of my town’s residents… ND, Georgetown, and Penn State would beat out many, many, many schools that we consider prestigious).</p>
<p>My list: </p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Navy</li>
<li>West Point (Army)</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Notre Dame
10-14 Other Ivies</li>
<li>Air Force</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Virginia</li>
<li>UNC</li>
</ol>
<p>depending on where you live, notre dame seems like a god send. the fact is, regardless of where it ranks in USNews, it only has a 3.9 PA, putting it down in the 30s or 40s academically. PA, IMO, is the “actual” rank of a school academically. But I think that has nothing to do with this argument</p>
<p>Regardless, a prestige ranking is only as good as the audience you’re catering to.</p>
<p>a CC audience? you’d have the Ivies, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Chicago, top state school of choice, at the top.</p>
<p>Sports? UNC, Penn State, ND, USC, Michigan (formerly), Army, OSU, Florida</p>
<p>random person on the street? HYP, Army, Navy, and whatever schools they happen to know of. Believe it or not, there are people who haven’t heard of MIT and Stanford.</p>
<p>With regards to the state schools, it honestly depends on where one is from. In new jersey, new york, VA, east coast, UVa>Berkeley and Michigan. I’m sure in Michigan or Cali, Michigan/Berkeley>UVa. Needless to say I’ve never met anyone from new jersey, new york, or virginia who thinks Berkeley or Michigan is better than UVa, and I can only assume it’s the opposite in the midwest/west.</p>
<p>jags861</p>
<p>You make a very good point. Regardless of rankings, public schools have will have much more prestige in their respective regions then elsewhere. I’m from the west coast, and I can assure you that nobody here would ever put UVa above Berkeley (and probably not above UCLA, either).</p>
<p>The problem is that the OP wasn’t specific with regards to the term “prestige”. Many people have mentioned Notre Dame because it has such a recognizable name. I can honestly say that I was pretty shocked to see the USNWR ranking with Notre Dame being so high up. I always thought it was a football school, so perhaps name recognition can actually detract from prestige? I think that the academic prestige of UC Berkeley may be overshadowed by its reputation for political activism. </p>
<p>Why not look at prestige more in terms of its recognition globally. If we were to do so than UC Berkeley would undoubtedly be ahead of UVa and many others. </p>
<p>However, even if the name UC Berkeley is more recognizable as a respected academic institution globally, its still much easier for a CA resident to get accepted there than at say, HYP. If you define prestige as the “Holy crap!” factor, i.e. what kind of response will you get when you name drop your college, than private schools have an unfair advantage since they are more selective in their admissions. If admissions is the only factor in prestige, the LACs would be some of the most prestigious colleges on earth, and lets face it- they are not. Respected among academic circles, yes, but telling someone you went to Pomona is not the same as saying you went to Stanford. I would guess the same is true on the East Coast with Amherst and Yale.</p>
<p>The point I am trying to make is that we need a much more clearly defined criteria for these rankings.</p>
<p>Also, I really hope Berkeley is as good as its reputation!</p>
<p>I dont understand you people that are saying that you are shocked that Notre Dame is a good academic school. Where have you been living all of your life? The class of 2011 had an acceptance rate of 24% with a 60+% yield (better than half the ivy league), and an average SAT score of 1390, median of over 1400. Yes, Notre Dame is not generally ranked highly as far as research goes, but that goes back to the bias of PA towards graduate programs (Berkeley ranked higher than Dartmouth and Brown?, UT Austin ranked higher than Georgetown?). Also of course there is the anti-catholic bias in academia. On objective criteria alone, Notre Dame is easily in the top 15 national universities. No, the PA ranking is not objective.</p>
<p>The problem with Notre Dame is that people associate it with sports, not academics.</p>
<p>Schools associated with research/other advances/tough admissions standards get more pull in the mind of the average Joe than a school best known for its football. After all, most folks don’t tend to think of sports players as brainiacs…</p>
<p>ckmets,</p>
<p>thats funny, i don’t understand you people who think notre dame is a “top 15/20/25” university. Is notre dame a solid school? undoubtedly yes. is notre dame an exectional school, academically…compared to the top 20 universities in the country? undoubtedly, no. the fact is, notre dame doesn’t really rank well in any ranking, except USnews. if you were to take out, imo the least important part of the USnews criteria–i.e. everything besides PA, then ND would barely, if at all be a top 30 university. ND doesn’t have prestigious graduate programs. Prestigious graduate programs generally spill over to undergrad. needless to say, regardless of ND’s lackluster grad programs, what does ND excel in? I can’t name anything, can you?</p>
<p>the truth is, for every school people say is a “top X/10/15/20/25” school, I can name a prestigious program. I can’t with ND. Until we can identify what ND is exactly “prestigious in,” then, imo, it shouldn’t be mentioned in prestige rankings unless it involves athletics.</p>
<p>eddyx,</p>
<p>i agree with much of what you say. my only problem is with your chime ins about things with regards to the international community. My response? who cares. I don’t plan on working internationally. 99.9% of US college graduates don’t plan on working internationally. International prestige should have 0, zero, zilch, nada to do with this thread. Who cares what a bunch of people in germany/england/south africa/japan/china/UAE think about our universities? I know I don’t care. And they probably think their universities are better anyway. Doesn’t mean a thing to me, or the overwhelmingly vast majority of other people on this website.</p>
<p>“But Notre Dame is not a big public, in fact it is ranked 19 in USNWR, so it is no slouch academically.
You yourself said that you didn’t recognize Duke as a good school until you saw US news. Does that mean that you would rank it lower, simply because it is known for its basketball?”</p>
<p>Obviously not. I know Duke is a great school, and I know Notre Dame is very good, because I have actually researched colleges. However, this is not about what I know, it’s about general prestige. My point is that being known for football is very different from being known for academics, and might actually hurt.</p>
<p>That supposed 1400+ median seems dubious with a 20-75 range of 1230-1460 (midpoint of 1345, lower than USC, Tufts etc). I don’t think there’s any reason to think Notre Dame is under-ranked, not that #19 is anything to be ashamed of. </p>
<p>Regardless, it’s about the perception rather than the reality. For example, Pomona is more selective than all but a few national universities, but that doesn’t mean the average person appreciates that. They may not realize either that a specialization in fat people in heavy padding crashing into each other is associated with great intellectual achievement.</p>
<p>Jags Notre Dame excels at placing its graduates into top jobs and gets them into top grad schools. It has a tremendous alumni network. Its a top 20 for sure.</p>
<p>“I dont understand you people that are saying that you are shocked that Notre Dame is a good academic school. Where have you been living all of your life?”</p>
<p>I don’t know about YOUR life, but during MY life Notre Dame has not always been such a hot academic school. It seems to have made great strides in selectivity since the time I applied to colleges. I still remember a comment a Georgetown alum made to me about a co-worker of ours who went to ND: " I’ve never met a grad of that school who was properly educated".</p>
<p>Circa 1970, Notre Dame accepted 68% of applicants, and the entering class had an average SAT score of 1187. This made it about 77th in selectivity on the spreadsheet I made.</p>
<p>Strangely, I agree with Slipper. I have no love for Notre Dame (for obvious reasons), but the school is on par with Emory, Georgetown, Rice, Vanderbilt and WUSTL. As such, it is definitely a top 20 university.</p>
<p>On a side note, at $5.5 billion, Notre Dame’s endowment is one of the most impressive, especially when considering its relatively small student population (10,000 or 11,000 if I recall).</p>