<p>Alphabetical Order:</p>
<p>Brown
Caltech
Carnegie Mellon
UChicago
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Harvard
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Northwestern
UPenn
Princeton
Stanford
Wash U
Yale</p>
<p>They are all pretty close.
Look them up on the US News site if you want a one-up ranking that at least has a documented methodology behind it. Or, pull up one of the many previous CC threads that has considered this issue (typically resulting in many unexplained, minor variations on the US News top N ranking.)</p>
<p>They are all top private universities that are on the same academic level. Ranking them can cause a huge war in this thread.</p>
<p>Why does it matter?</p>
<p>Those are all absolutely top notch institutions. And this list has been ranked dozens if not hundreds of times on here. Just do a quick search for rankings, and you’ll find plenty of results.</p>
<p>Depending on what one is looking for, the rankings could be entirely different.</p>
<p>Once you get to this level of prestige, despite what you or anyone else may think, it’s totally pointless to rank these universities (all the more reason why USNews should use a tiered system instead).</p>
<p>The difference in the quality of these schools is negligible… The difference in prestige is not. But prestige is stupid. Unless you’re going overseas after graduation, or going into investment banking, it doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>JHU, CMU and WashU are a little below the rest.</p>
<p>^Someone took the bait. Time to get the popcorn!</p>
<p>Metauniversity, which combines 3 global rankings, says the following (in terms of global prestige):</p>
<p>Harvard
MIT
Caltech
Stanford
Princeton
UChicago
Yale
Columbia
UPenn
Cornell
JHU
Northwestern
Duke
CMU
WashU
Brown</p>
<p>Dartmouth is not in the top 50</p>
<p>[Meta</a> University Ranking 2012/13 | MetaUniversityRanking](<a href=“http://metauniversityranking.com/worlds-top-50-universities-metascore/]Meta”>http://metauniversityranking.com/worlds-top-50-universities-metascore/)</p>
<p>Rubbish. All rubbish. As stated plenty of times before: they are all top-notch institutions.</p>
<p>^Agreed. </p>
<p>Ranking Yale halfway down the list but Harvard at the top is BS. Because the whole list is BS.</p>
<p>I didn’t make the list, and neither did Metauniversityranking.com. The list was compiled from rankings by QS, THE, ARWU, the three most reputable international rankings around. And because it is an international ranking, a lot more emphasis is placed on research and less on undergraduate education, hence why certain schools are ranked higher than others.</p>
<p>I’m quite sure that schools like Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Chicago do more groundbreaking research than Yale.</p>
<p>Those are all amazing universities with excellent academic reputations. If I had to break them down according to academic reputation, this is how I would do it:</p>
<p>GROUP I
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
Yale University</p>
<p>GROUP II
Brown University
California Institute of Technology
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
Northwestern University
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>GROUP III
Carnegie Mellon University
Washington University-St Louis</p>
<p>remyCC - What are you planning to study?</p>
<p>For engineering and computer science, Carnergie-Mellon, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Cornell and U Penn are in the top.</p>
<p>Obviously, HYPS are tops for general “prestige” and the wow-I-got-in and brag-to-the-neighbors factors.</p>
<p>I thought you got into Brown and Berkeley so I don’t get the point of this list?</p>
<p><a href=“Ivy league vs state school - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Ivy league vs state school - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;
<p>@LakeClouds Planning to study Econ. </p>
<p>I’ve seen a lot of “vs” threads but not a list ranking. Anyway, this list is just for fun? Lol</p>
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<p>True, but at many of these, undergrad quality of life in the classroom will be below that of the local LAC, that’s the sad truth.</p>
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<p>Throw rotten vegetables in a pot, and no matter the cooking you will end up with a horrible soup. The rankings do not focus less on UG education; their asinine methodology ignore it completely and focus on the never ending navel gazing of researchers. Those rankings have no relevance to the selection process for US undergraduate students.</p>
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<p>There are actually a ton of threads asking people to rank basically this exact same list of schools in order by prestige and reputation. But…why not another one? </p>
<p>These rankings are incredibly subjective though. Caltech, MIT, UChicago, Stanford and Princeton for instance have excellent physics programs, other schools on this last are “lacking” in comparison, but if one wants to major in the humanities, MIT or Caltech likely isn’t going to be the best choice. Johns Hopkins, MIT and Stanford all have excellent genetics departments, some of these other schools are a little weaker in these areas. UChicago, Stanford and Princeton all tend to be very strong in Sociology. MIT and Caltech? Not so much. </p>
<p>All of these schools are strong in all of these areas for the most part…but ranking them in a cut and dry order is almost pointless. For physics and engineering, UC Berkeley and UIUC are two of the best schools in the country, but they aren’t on this list. In these areas, they are widely considered to be much better schools than many of the choices on this list. Should an aspiring engineer rule out UIUC or Berk just because they aren’t on the top 20 most prestigious list? The majority of the best engineering schools in the country aren’t even on this list. GATech, Purdue, UMich, UW Madison…all amazing engineering schools.</p>
<p>Prestige can carry some merit, but unless you’re going into politics, investment banking, or something of that nature…the prestige isn’t going to be of a whole lot of importance. You could get a solid education in virtually any field at any one of these schools…or any one of hundreds of other colleges.</p>
<p>If I were to try and rank them…schools like Caltech, UChicago and MIT would be at my top…but I’m a physics major, and these schools all have very good physics departments. Regardless, I’m not going to end up going to any of them. When I transfer from my CC, I’m going to University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign…even though it’s a horrible state school. They offer more flexibility for the program I want to follow (double major in physics and math, double minor in computer science and philosophy) and offer cheaper in state tuition for me.</p>
<p>Then I want to do grad school at Berkeley. Even though it’s not on this list.</p>
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<p>Never heard of UIUC being horrible for anything other than financial aid (even for in-state students). Of course, for investment banking or management consulting, any school other than HYP is “horrible”…</p>
<p>I was being sarcastic. 
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<p>It’s an excellent school. It’s our state flagship, and has nothing to be ashamed of when compared to any of the “top” schools in my opinion. In fact, I might even be inclined to consider it a “top” school. Even the USNews rankings usually throw UIUC up near the top…not that I really put any stock in that. UIUC even has the second largest university library in the country…being surpassed only by Harvard. They have 12million + print volumes, and over 24 million volumes altogether. This fact means more to me than any ranking list. I’m a voracious reader, and self educator on the side…I have an avid interest in both history and anthropology, but I don’t have the time to take any history classes…and I won’t have any time for any anthro beyond the two introductory anthro classes that I’m taking next year… A school that has the second largest university library in the country has an extra layer of appeal to me. I can spend hours burrowing my way into the stacks of a good library.</p>
<p>They aren’t too bad for financial aid if you’re in state, at least from what I’ve seen. For the 12-13 year, they met 64% of their students financial needs…with about 31% receiving their full demonstrated need. Definitely not as good as many other schools…but…it could be worse I guess. Average tuition is around $14,000 for in state students…which is a hell of a lot lower than most of the “top” schools. Aside from the PELL grant…Illinois residents are also eligible for the MAP grant, which is need based, and can go up to about $3500. Call it $9000 between the PELL and the MAP, along with outside scholarships and in-house scholarships…and it turns out not to be too bad.</p>
<p>And I’ve gone off on a tangent.</p>