<p>
It doesn’t help that pretty much all the people who put UCLA high on the list are affiliated with UCLA. ;)</p>
<p>Lay prestige in rural Upstate NY? Are you CCers sure you can take it?</p>
<p>OK, here goes:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Binghamton</li>
<li>Notre Dame</li>
<li>NYU</li>
<li>MIT </li>
<li>Boston College</li>
<li>RPI</li>
<li>Boston University</li>
<li>Northeastern</li>
<li>Penn State</li>
<li>UCONN</li>
<li>UMASS</li>
<li>University of Rochester</li>
<li>WPI</li>
<li>University at Albany</li>
<li>University of Pittsburgh</li>
</ol>
<p>And yes, I am 100% serious. However, I am highly doubtful that the average Joe and Jane in my area would have the slightest idea what a “National University” was. Unless explained to them, they would probably have included schools such as Colgate, Williams and Union (but definitely not Bard).</p>
<p>South Carolina</p>
<ol>
<li>H</li>
<li>Y</li>
<li>P</li>
<li>S</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>COLUMBIA</li>
<li>DUKE</li>
<li>VANDY</li>
<li>UPENN</li>
<li>DART.</li>
<li>CORNELL</li>
<li>BROWN</li>
<li>RICE</li>
<li>NU</li>
<li>UC</li>
<li>ND</li>
<li>UVA</li>
<li>JHU</li>
<li>WASH ST</li>
<li>GEORGETOWN</li>
<li>EMORY</li>
</ol>
<p>NC:
Harvard Yale Princeton Stanford MIT
Duke
Columbia
Penn
Vanderbilt
UNC CH</p>
<p>Old thread going back to 2009.
OP has not posted for some time.</p>
<p>Although this is an old thread, I want to address comments made just this morning:</p>
<p>I’ve lived in NC all my life, and I’ve done extensive work with college students and colleges in general. I totally disagree on how people in NC see the top universities. Most people think of UNC, Duke, Davidson, and Wake Forest (maybe to a lesser extent) as being on roughly the same academic level, realizing that they are very different schools and each one has its own strengths. There is a strong feeling that UNC excels across the board for academics, social life, sports, and (this is where a big difference comes in) great financial value. As for engineering, NC State gets the most respect by far. The Research Triangle and, indeed, the entire Triangle area (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) has a lot of high-tech industry. NC State is where employers focus their recruiting efforts for engineers. No, Duke is definitely not seen as above other universities, with one exception.*</p>
<p>Part of this is a long tradition of most of NC’s brightest students heading to public universities. We are fortunate to have an excellent public system at a great value, plus UNC and NC State both have huge fan bases, so lots of students grow up with a focus on going to one of those.</p>
<p>Wake Forest used to draw mainly from NC. Duke and Davidson, more so than now, but not as much as Wake. The costs of attending these schools have become prohibitively expensive and have priced out those middle and upper middle class students who used to be the foundation of the student bodies. Most people around here won’t go into heavy debt to pay for an education, so those schools now bring in many more wealthy out of state students. Our most intelligent students decide that it’s more financially sensible to go to UNC, NC State, or one of the other public universities than even to look at Duke, Wake, or Davidson. They know that they can get a great education at a fraction of the cost.</p>
<p>I think there are very few people in NC who are so rankings-focused. Most people don’t spend much time thinking about the Ivy League vs. MIT vs. Stanford vs. everywhere else. They have great respect for those schools, but they aren’t bowled over by the names.</p>
<p>*That exception is Duke Hospital. It is one of the top in the world, especially in the areas of cardiology and ophthalmology.</p>
<p>I don’t know what part of NC you are from, but I know that where I’m from people know that Duke is far better than any other school in NC and that it is on par with the ivy league. UNC comes second and wake and state aren’t considered to be in the same league as UNC let alone Duke and the Ivies.</p>
<p>South FL:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania (most think it’s a state u)</li>
<li>Emory</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>WUSTL</li>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>Vanderbilt</li>
<li>Notre Dame</li>
<li>University of Chicago</li>
</ol>
<p>GAILFORCE – I’m from a part of NC where many, many people have a direct connection to either UNC, State, and/or Duke. I work with students who go, and have been, to all three universities. I also work with, and am related to, people who hire engineers and computer programmers. Some of them work at top tech companies, and NC State is the #1 place they recruit for those jobs.</p>
<p>I’ve lived in NC all my life (aside from some extensive travel and study overseas). While North Carolinians have high respect for Duke’s academics, they do not see Duke as heads above other NC universities. Duke is not the best university for everything. Looking at professional schools: While Duke’s hospital and medical specialist training programs are some of the best in the world, UNC and ECU do much better with educating primary care physicians. Anyone who wants to go to Wall Street would be well advised to head to Duke, but anyone who wants to stay in NC and practice law or go into politics would be better served at UNC or even Campbell. The connections are much better.</p>
<p>For undergraduate, I would definitely steer an engineering student to NC State, unless he/she plans to move to a part of the country where a Duke degree would be seen as superior. Computer science is strong at all three universities. Most companies in the area (some of them nationally recognized for their products and employee satisfaction) recruit mainly at State. If, though, I were interested in virtual reality, I would favor Duke (top-notch virtual reality lab) or UNC (also cutting-edge virtual reality research). Looking at humanities, particularly English and history, UNC and Duke are both excellent. For an undergraduate creative writing program, UNC is, hands down, the best. I won’t run through all the majors here, though. :)</p>
<p>Again, I’ve worked with and known many graduates from NCSU and UNC, and a number from Duke (although fewer, because more of its graduates leave the state). No one school stands out as having prepared its students any better than the other two. Moreover, the top students at the top public high schools in NC (the ones who would be Ivy contenders if they applied) usually choose to go to UNC (or NC State if they want to study engineering).</p>
<p>Harvard
Princeton
Yale
MIT
CalTech
Stanford
Penn
Columbia
Chicago
Dartmouth
Cornell
Brown
Duke
Northwestern
Johns Hopkins
Vanderbilt
WashU</p>
<p>There are a couple schools that at least to me, don’t generate that much awe, such as Washington University, and Northwestern.</p>
<p>I realize they are very highly ranked, but at least to me, they don’t seem as good to me as a Johns Hopkins, or a Berkeley, for example.</p>
<p>So obviously, prestige is a very subjective matter.</p>
<p>This is my best guess for my HS:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Vanderbilt</li>
<li>Notre Dame</li>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>WashU</li>
<li>Emory</li>
</ol>
<p>So I take it that “lay prestige” (not just among high school kids, but among the masses; people of all ages, races, socioeconomic backgrounds etc…) mirrors the USNWR college rankings eh?</p>
<p>“So I take it that “lay prestige” (not just among high school kids, but among the masses; people of all ages, races, socioeconomic backgrounds etc…) mirrors the USNWR college rankings eh?”</p>
<p>Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, Princeton, the other Ivies</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Upenn</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>UChicago</li>
<li>JHU</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
</ol>
<p>The rest is all blurred together. The rankings are a little weird because there are some schools that the best students tended to try to get into, and I think the general population began to associate those schools with high prestige.</p>
<p>North Carolina
I honestly wasn’t even aware Chicago and Notre Dame would ever rank that high</p>
<p>Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Duke
CalTech/MIT/Stanford/Penn
Cornell
Brown
Columbia
Dartmouth
Johns Hopkins
Northwestern/WashU
Emory/Rice/Vanderbilt
Chicago
Notre Dame</p>
<p>For Northern California</p>
<p>1-Stanford, Harvard
3-Caltech, MIT, Yale, Pton
7-Berkeley, Cornell
9-UCLA, though the gap to Cal is very low
10-Davis, Irvine, SD, SB, SLO
15-SJSU, SFSU, Chico, Humboldt</p>
<p>Did not include other Ivies because they are just not well known. Dart and Columbia are probably the most well-known of the unknowns.</p>
<p>For my country (it’s in Southeast Asia):</p>
<ol>
<li>Haaaarrr-veeeerd</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Stanford & MIT</li>
<li>USC, UCLA</li>
</ol>
<p>The rest are just crap schools with 100% acceptance rate 
</p>
<p>I jest, of course - but this is seriously how the hoi polloi here view US universities.</p>
<p>^ That seems about as expected.</p>
<p>france:
harvard
yale
stanford
princeton
berkley
ucla
mit
brown
rest are all mostly unknown</p>
<p>Sent from my GT-I9300 using CC</p>