<p>I doubt that many know Notre Dame is prestigious; many just know it because of its sports program.</p>
<p>michigan should be right there.. just a hair below berkeley</p>
<p>Here's a study that attempts to do this.</p>
<p>I would say it has alot to do with where you live, what type of people you encounter. Everyone in NYC knows Columbia is a great school, but you'll get blank stares in LA.</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
</ol>
<p>I hate to say it, but I think that most LAC's are out of luck in terms of "common man's view" as the OP termed it. I also think that beyond Stanford (and if you are scientifically inclined, maybe Caltech) most California schools are just that, California schools. UCLA, UC Berkeley, and USC may be good schools, but I'd never heard of them as selective or prestigious until I came to this site. I had never heard of Caltech, period. If you want to analyze my biases, I'm studying English, so I'd never researched tech or science schools, and I'm from the Southeast, so maybe the common man in California would classify them as prestigious, but I think they may be more localized than say Harvard.</p>
<p>from my experience as living on the east coast i never new Berkeley was a LAC until i started to look seriously into colleges. I would say that Berkeley has a bigger anme than bing's 6-10.</p>
<p>I was getting allergy shots the other day...this story does have a point...and I was telling the nurse that I was going to Duke next year and she was like, "is that in California?". I said no, and she was like "oh, yeah that's Berkeley" and then she continued "that's right, and Duke is in one of the Carolina's...and what's the one up North...Harvard?". That pretty much sums up the common man's view.</p>
<p>I go to a "common man's" high school. Here is a list of "good schools" according to my less-than-knowledgeable peers: </p>
<p>Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, NYU, Berkeley, Cornell, Columbia, UCLA </p>
<p>A pretty obvious east coast bias, since we are in NYC.</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity would you say that the average Joe on the streets in the USA would know Oxford more than other great but not so well known USA universties such as Emory or Rice? I was thinking about this due to the dictionary being so widely used ad the huge size of the Oxford press.</p>
<p>I think people do know Oxford, because it's been thrown around before. However, I don't think all of those same people know that Oxford is in the UK.</p>
<p>Harvard
MIT
Stanford/Yale/Princeton
columbia/cornell
berkeley/ucla
michigan
northwestern/brown/jhu
.
.
.
.
caltech</p>
<p>caltech is not very well known in my country</p>
<p>Schools like Caltech, JHU, Cornell tend to be down played because most of you don't read research journals and don't follow the world of science enough to get where the prestige really lies. Of course caltech you cut more slack because of US News and its well known more or less but most science focused schools tend to be under appreciated around here.</p>
<p>Agree.... my counsellor hasn't even heard of harvey mudd... lol</p>
<p>in my school in China, LACs were </p>
<p>interpreted as less than average colleges....</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think mr. average Joe would know neither.</p>
<p>1harvard
2yale
3mit
4princeton
5stanford</p>
<p>period!!!!</p>
<p>For once and for all, say it together now.............</p>
<p>The common man DOES NOT matter.</p>
<p>(when it comes to recognizing prestigious schools, at least)</p>
<p>End of discussion.</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale/Oxford</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Cal</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Penn</li>
</ol>
<p>Duke gets two spots for the win?</p>
<p>I live in Cambridge (host city of HARVARD AND MIT)</p>
<p>I took high level courses there, and I can say that Harvard has more prestige than MIT.</p>