Ranking Colleges by Prestigiosity

not true, my mother is a regular poster on the “chance me for Ivies” thread.

Then by now she should be well aware of Williams, etc. The prestigiosity quest is contagious.

I propose that Emory, it go down in prestigiosity by milliHarvards. After all it doesn’t offer an engineering major and it’s in Atlanta which is in the South so basically hick where no one ever gets a good job. After all, if you’re not a working engineer or on Wall Street (which can obviously only be achieved by going to school in the Northeast) you’re probably going to be destitute according to most of the kids on here. Since Emory is not loved, it should go down.

@Hunt Perhaps you should rank college majors by prestigiosity. If you do it, make sure to include pre-med since it’s totally a major according to half the high school students on here.

Emory is listed at the same level as other primarily regional powerhouses like Hopkins and Vanderbilt.

Yes I saw that and just edited my post. Still, who would want to go to a school without a football team and an engineering program?

That is an important distinction. Do strong sports programs add or detract from prestigiosity?

@madamecrabster - I think strong teams in the more prestigiousity-ish areas, such as crew, would raise rankings, but football is kind of low-brow in that regard.

I think for most of the prestigiosity-seekers on CC, sports are irrelevant. One exception might be Duke, where it does seem to be a plus.

@Hunt How does defensiveness about a school, such as Berkley, factor into prestigiosity?

If Harvard is an actual institution and milliharvard’s are being used metaphorically, I see no reason why Harvard should have a “perfect score” in milliharvards.

Harvard could lose its perfect score. But it hasn’t.

Ya gotta have calibration standards and benchmarks or all of this becomes just real loosey-goosey.

Latecomer to this wonderful thread. I believe prestigiosity is inversely proportional to the amount of college-branded clothing worn on campus.

When i visited Tufts last fall, this clothing was notoriously ubiquitous. It seemed everyone was wearing a Tufts sweatshirt. It struck me at the time as a collective attempt to convince themselves of their university’s status.

Very few of the students i saw on my Harvard tour wore any identifying garments (unless they were on a sports team), and at Visitas i found an aversion to announce one’s good fortune (perhaps to avoid being asked to pose for Chinese tourists’ photos).

Interesting theory, Regurge. I think logo clothing predominance measures something else, though–perhaps something like a sense of campus solidarity. I agree that it’s quite noticeable at Tufts, but it is at Yale, also.

“When i visited Tufts last fall, this clothing was notoriously ubiquitous. It seemed everyone was wearing a Tufts sweatshirt. It struck me at the time as a collective attempt to convince themselves of their university’s status.”

I think that’s a very unusual take on it. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just see it as pride / connection to one’s school, as opposed to a “I have to convince myself that this place is good” mindset.

The president of Northwestern, Morton Schapiro, used to be the president of Williams College. He was known around town as always wearing a purple tie or other purple gear. It so happened Northwestern’s color is also purple, and he does the same thing - he even joked when he first came to campus that coming to another “purple campus” made his job search easier. He has something like 50 or so purple ties. It’s charming, IMO. He’s not “trying to convince himself” of his university’s status - it’s just a fun way to show community / solidarity.

I was just at Princeton the other week and saw plenty of Princeton-themed t-shirts. I don’t think it means anything other than school pride. Maybe Harvard people are less likely to wear it because they are already to some extent “elephants in the circus” because of so many tourists who stop and gape at them (which is unfortunate).

I have a sophomore at tufts and another son who just graduated from brown. Both wear their respective school’s hoodie with pride. I’ve also spent a lot of time in Cambridge since I stay at the Charles hotel every time I take my kid back to school at tufts and for parents’ weekend. I’ve seen plenty of harvard logo worn about town. And when I went to the harvard v. Brown football game at parents’ weekend, it was clear that plenty of harvard kids have invested in their school’s clothing and wear it with pride, too. Nothing surprising there. The Harvard coop now has a whole store dedicated to Harvard paraphernalia separated from the bookstore. When I was a kid & my uncle was a Harvard prof, there was only one store that sold it all, which is where the coop bookstore is now. But I think this generation is much more into wearing their school logo, so the coop opened up a shop wholely dedicated it to it a few doors away.

A trailing indicator of prestigiosity might be how many Chinese tourists want their photo taken with someone wearing that college’s identifying garment.

^ That’s an interesting twist and one that makes sense.

Perhaps. But wouldn’t it be countered by the Coop’s decision to expand its logo sportswear offerings so they can be sold onsite to Chinese tourists? Exit through the gift shop.