<p>MODERATOR’S NOTE: Bye-bye to pailface/misanthrope1.</p>
<p>@kaarboer </p>
<p>People are focused on consulting jobs because they are a jumping off point to many other careers. Working at a place like McKinsey prepares a young adult for a wide range of fields and advanced degrees. </p>
<p>Some firms will heavily favor a group of schools. UChicago graduates are simply not recruited as much as HYPSMAW graduates, sorry. Again, this is only true for the most competitive firms. </p>
<p>The obsession with the ivies/elite liberal arts schools will probably fade as people realize that there are many other great schools (like UChicago) with equally competent graduates. </p>
<p>There are so many outstanding schools in this country that are ignored because they are less well known by the general (uneducated) public. Completely ignoring prestige is foolish, but obsessing over prestige is bad for your health.</p>
<p>@benedictharold @gondalineNJ This thread’s supposed to be a joke. Hence the “prestigiosity” label (prestigiosity:prestige::truthiness:truth). Don’t lose faith just yet.</p>
<p>As for my own random decimal points, they were actually obtained using a certain formula. No, I didn’t actually spend all that time coming up with random strings of 10 digits. Hope that clears things up.</p>
<p>@Misanthrope1 Yeah, you should probably not get so offended by this either. It’s just a joke. No one’s actually talking about prestige/quality here, at least not until around this page when they lost sight of the thread’s purpose. :/</p>
<p>Although I would personally rank Caltech with/above HYPSM, it seems like the general public is generally ignorant of it. Here’s a recent discussion with my family:</p>
<p>Family: “Where are you applying for college?”
Me: “MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Caltech.”
Family: “Where’s that again?”
Me: “Pasadena, near Los Angeles.”
Family: “Oh, is that where they film the Big Bang Theory?”
Me: Facepalm.</p>
<p>Actually, this was really surprising to me, since the family members in question both attended semi-prestigious colleges and work in education. :/</p>
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</p>
<p>That’s a shame because it was so serious in the beginning.</p>
<p>^ Tongue firmly in cheek…</p>
<p>
I think it bears repeating that Ghostt was the originator of the milliHarvard.</p>
<p>I find it distressing to find people discussing irrelevant facts on this thread, such as how particular college degrees might assist in obtaining consulting jobs. There are plenty of other threads for such discussions. This one is devoted to the scientific analysis of prestigiosity, as defined in the earliest posts.</p>
<p>@Hunt you say it was @Ghostt that originated the thread but as I recall you are the progenitor.</p>
<p>@dividerofzero </p>
<p>Would that this thread were the “joke” you claim it is. Tongue not quite firmly in cheek for most not to take seriously, sadly. All the clever lingo–“MilliHarvards” and “prestigiosity”–co-opted by more dreary status strivers.</p>
<p>And indeed there is a poster here who started a thread at one time stating she/he wanted to get an idea of the relative prestige of the Ivies, so as to be better informed when it comes time to put together a college list for her/ his future offspring (whether or not the poster was even married yet, one cannot say). Don’t think it was a ■■■■■ post, either.</p>
<p>@Hunt care to explain your aforementioned rankings?</p>
<p>I started this thread, and created the idea of “prestigiosity,” but Ghostt came up with the “milliHarvard.”</p>
<p>Here, again, is the definition of presitigiosity:
The ratings are generated by my scientific analysis of my own perception of postings here on CC.</p>
<p>And the point remains that this rating system is just as good (if not better) than any other general rating system of the quality of colleges.</p>
<p>And just to save anybody from having to look back, here are my updated ratings, based on this admissions season:
</p>
<p>I commend your work, Hunt, but in regards to your ranking I would like to dispute Chicago’s placement on par with Cornell and below Dartmouth, Brown and the loser part of UPenn. In recent years Chicago’s reputation on CC has benefited from a well-orchestrated and costly prestigiosity drive, while Dartmouth’s prestigiosity has been harmed by a series of campus incidents that “would never happen at Harvard.” Brown’s feeble attempts to advance in prestigiosity have yielded no results, while the loser part of UPenn has simply been treading Kool-Aid. (That’s a metaphor for stagnation, for those of you who haven’t taken the SAT yet.) I think Emory and Vanderbilt ought to be worth less milliHarvards than Johns Hopkins as well, given the latter’s strong reputation in the biomedical sciences, which are not far behind consulting and investment banking in the cognate league table of occupational prestigiosity.</p>
<p>I need to take a closer look at recent acceptance rates before I can make any further claims, but I believe the above points are easily substantiated.</p>
<p>I would say Chicago is easily above Cornell and at least the same as Dartmouth, Brown and non-Wharton Penn (even higher if you ask me). I can say that I personally chose Chicago over both Brown, Cornell, and Duke and know of two other peers in my year and the year above me who did the same. Also, there’s no way that Columbia isn’t higher than Duke. </p>
<p>I don’t know if I’d go so far as Columbia>Duke, especially on CC. I’d say that in terms of prestigiosity, Duke, Columbia, and Chicago are all worth 990mH.</p>
<p>According to me:</p>
<p>Popular perception: Duke = Columbia > Chicago
CC: Columbia >= Chicago >= Duke </p>
<p>Reality: Columbia >= Duke/Chicago</p>
<p>It does seem like Chicago gets a lot of appreciation on CC. Maybe it’s because Chicago affiliates appear to be more active on the website. If you say something often enough, it becomes the truth :)</p>
<p>They’re all great schools though. Among the very best in the world!</p>
<p>@bradybest You can always find anecdotal evidence to support your point of view. I know people who have chosen Duke over Princeton but that doesn’t mean that Duke is the more prestigious school. You won’t be hard pressed to find people who have chosen Chicago over Columbia or Columbia over Duke or Duke over Chicago. Individual decisions are not a good measure of prestige.</p>
<p>While one person’s decision isn’t a metric alone, if there are significant numbers of Duke/Chicago/Columbia cross admits who pick each one, then its probable that these schools are equivalently seen (though I’d be surprised if there were all that many Duke/Chicago cross-admits; the schools seem to be very different in feel and thus in applicant pool).</p>
<p>As for why you think Chicago’s hot, well, if a school goes from 20+% admitted to <10% in a relatively short span, well, its going to draw discussion.</p>
<p>Edit: but this is a thread about presitigiosity, so I’ll leave it at Duke=Chicago=Columbia in this regard.</p>
<p>If we’re talking about lay prestige, I’m going to guess that the vast majority know of Duke as a bball school and not really its strength as an academic institution. I’m from TX and a few of my neighbors (educated engineers/businessmen making $200k+) didn’t even know what Chicago/Columbia were. </p>