<p>According to USNWR, the top 20 schools are:</p>
<p>Harvard/Princeton
Yale
CalTech/MIT/Stanford/Penn
Columbia
Chicago
Duke
Dartmouth
Northwestern/WashU
Johns Hopkins
Cornell
Brown
Emory/Rice/Vanderbilt
Notre Dame</p>
<p>Re-rank these NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES according to LAY prestige BASED ON WHERE YOU LIVE (say where). DO NOT include schools from outside the US News top 20 national universities--no LACs.</p>
<p>I live in Michigan, I would assume the top 20 universities ranked by USNEWS is seen in my region as:
Harvard/Princeton/Yale
Columbia/ Brown
Stanford/Penn
Chicago/Duke
Dartmouth/ Cornell
Northwestern/Notre Dame/Johns Hopkins
MIT
Rice/Vanderbilt
WashU
Emory/CalTech</p>
<p>It depends who you ask, of course… I’m sure a lot of people around here would consider UF as # 1 and probably the majority of people would have it in the top 20.</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Duke
Cornell
Notre Dame
Columbia
Vanderbilt
Chicago
Dartmouth</p>
<p>NYC:
Harvard,Yale, Princeton, Columbia
MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Penn
Notre Dame, Duke, Dartmouth, Brown
Hopkins, Northwestern
rest are largely unknown to the average guido</p>
<p>I live in one of the five boroughs of New York, and I attended high school in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. This is my “ask average Joe New Yorker what’s what,” not: “hey, wealthy socialite, what do you think?”</p>
<p>I’m not listing them all, and the order isn’t that important. My point is that Harvard is indisputably number one in lay prestige. Followed by the sports schools. Then, some of the Ivy League schools. Then, Johns Hopkins, because its research representatives are so commonly cited in articles.</p>
<p>CIT, Chicago, Dartmouth, NU, WUSTL, Rice, Penn, typical people won’t know about.
Especially Rice and CIT.</p>
<p>I’m from CA, and we would rank a lot of schools that are NOT in the top-20, in the top-20. Therefore, I am going to override your rules for the purpose of a more accurate reflection of the local perception. Disregard if you aren’t interested.:</p>
<p>HYPM
Stanford
Columbia
Berkeley
Penn/Dartmouth/Brown/Cornell
Notre Dame/Georgetown/UCLA/JHU/Virginia
Michigan
CalTech (surprisingly, it’s not a school that comes up in conversation nearly as much as the aforementioned ones…and certainly not as much as MIT, at least in my experience- though I do believe it’s an excellent university).
U-Chicago
NYU</p>
<p>Just missing the cut: UNC, USC, Boston College</p>
<p>Again, just how I think the average person would rank US colleges based on where I live in CA…don’t necessarily agree with it all by any means, but that’s my $.02. Cheers!</p>
<p>Top 20 American universities as viewed around the world:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard University</li>
<li>Stanford University</li>
<li>University of California, Berkeley</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)</li>
<li><p>California Institute of Technology</p></li>
<li><p>Columbia University</p></li>
<li><p>Princeton University</p></li>
<li><p>University of Chicago</p></li>
<li><p>Yale University</p></li>
<li><p>Cornell University</p></li>
<li><p>University of California, Los Angeles</p></li>
<li><p>University of California, San Diego</p></li>
<li><p>University of Pennsylvania</p></li>
<li><p>University of Washington</p></li>
<li><p>University of Wisconsin - Madison</p></li>
<li><p>University of California, San Francisco</p></li>
<li><p>The Johns Hopkins University</p></li>
<li><p>University of Michigan - Ann Arbor</p></li>
<li><p>University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign</p></li>
<li><p>University of Minnesota, Twin Cities</p></li>
</ol>
<p>These lists do not accurately portray lay prestige. The average New Yorker does not realize that Columbia is in the Ivy League and/or mistakenly assumes that Stanford and MIT are…</p>
<p>This is what the “wealthy socialites” at my NYC hs think:</p>
<p>HYP
…
S
…
Brown
Amherst/Williams
Dartmouth
…
Columbia</p>
<p>The kids at my hs seem to have a love/hate relationship with Columbia. Many think that the world revolves around NYC; at the same time, they want(ed) to go away for college.</p>
<p>Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Penn
MIT
Stanford
Columbia
Brown
Dartmouth
Cornell
Duke
CalTech
Rice
Vanderbilt
Chicago<br>
Northwestern
Johns Hopkins
Emory
WashU
Notre Dame</p>
<p>Area-ten miles from the NSC and Situation Rooms at the White House, the Open market meeting room at the Fed, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court, Langley and the US Congress.</p>