This must kill you as a Yalie, Hunt.
@spuding102 I hope they have pictures of a Harvard student making funny faces.
The idea that Yale is better than Harvard, despite Harvardās superior prestigiosity, is one of the defining features of a Yale student/alum.
Plus, I feel I should disclose that I also went to Harvard, but not for undergrad.
Nicely subtly done, Hunt.
Many schools are better than Harvard, outside of CC prestigiosity scale.
Which ones? Dying to know.
You can start with Yale. 
Bumping this because no other ranking can beat this 
For those who donāt want to look back, here are the most recent prestigiosity ratings, edited here for a few clarifications only:
Harvard: 1000 mH
Yale/Princeton: 998 mH
MIT (or Caltech): 997.365782322119 mH
Stanford: 995 mH (998 west of the Mississippi)
Penn (Wharton): 992
Duke: 990 mH (995 south of the Mason Dixon line)
Columbia: 990 mH
Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore: 988 mH
Brown: 987 mH
Penn (other than Wharton), Dartmouth: 985 mH
Cornell (CAS and engineering): 980 mH
Chicago: 980 mH
Northwestern, WUSTL, Rice: 975 mH
Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Emory: 950 mH
Tufts, Georgetown, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Bowdoin: 925 mH
University of Virginia: 900 mH (950 in Virginia; 990 in Virginia excluding Northern Virginia)
UC Berkeley: 900 mH
Michigan 890 mH
UCLA, CMU, Notre Dame: 880
CC Darlings (in alphabetical order):
Alabama (for merit scholarships)
Carleton
Claremont Colleges
Deep Springs
Grinnell
Harvey Mudd (part of Claremont colleges, but listed separately because of STEM focus)
Kenyon
Macalester
Oberlin
Reed
Smith
St. Johns (Great Books LAC in Annapolis and Santa Fe)
I love this thread so much
(even though, as a UChicago alum, I want to quibble with it something fierce look at the Nobel Prizes blah blah life of the mind blah blah) 
The average person on the street probably doesnāt care too much about Nobel Prizes. I do though. Even though it is undeniable that Chicago inflates its tally, the genuine total is still incredibly impressive. The number of Physics laureates is particularly noteworthy (Econ has always been a less significant award from my perspective).
Most average people conflate the prizes in science with the Peace Prize (which has lost its luster over the past few years because of political reasons).
The best part is the commentary. Funny, yet accurate!
Duke: (995 south of the Mason Dixon line)
University of Virginia: (950 in Virginia; 990 in Virginia excluding Northern Virginia)
Although I have no problem with UChicagoās rating, an important point needs to be made about these prestigiosity rankings. It does not matter what the average person on the street cares about, they are irrelevant. The ranking is all about what CC posters think is more prestigious and desirable because they are the only demographic that really matters.
@hunt Why is UC Berkeley so low? I admit I have a bias as I am a Californian, but in my opinion, it can definitely match up against the schools in the 925-975 range.
EDIT: I do see this discussed in earlier pages, but I donāt want to read through all 33 xD
In another thread, starting at post #78, Iāve reported my findings on college matriculation patterns at 10 āeliteā private high schools (including Phillips Exeter, Horace Mann, Hotchkiss, and Harvard-Westlake). Other posters have given lots of good feedback about my choice of high schools and how to interpret the results.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1847482-private-prep-schools-and-hot-colleges-p6.html
The premise is that students at these high schools represent a population of affluent, high-achieving, prestige-conscious students who get good guidance counseling and are relatively well-informed about colleges. So, which colleges (or what kinds of colleges) do they seem to prefer?
These are the 30 schools that capture the most out of nearly 6,000 matriculations:
TOTAL COLLEGE
271 Columbia University
253 Cornell University
241 New York University
237 University of Pennsylvania
235 Harvard University
220 University of Southern California
219 Yale University
210 Stanford University
198 University of Chicago
188 University of Michigan
182 Brown University
152 Georgetown University
139 Princeton University
120 Wesleyan University
118 Washington University
112 Johns Hopkins University
109 Tufts University
106 Northwestern University
101 Emory University
97 Dartmouth College
82 Duke University
79 Williams College
76 University of California Berkeley
76 Barnard College
75 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
75 Colgate University
73 Vanderbilt University
70 Boston College
68 Amherst College
64 Middlebury College
These are the average matriculation ranks at the 10 high schools:
AVERAGE COLLEGE
6.7 Harvard University
7.3 Columbia University
7.5 Cornell University
8.2 Yale University
8.9 New York University
10.3 Stanford University
10.4 University of Pennsylvania
10.8 University of Chicago
12.1 Brown University
13.7 Princeton University
16.6 Tufts University
16.7 Georgetown University
16.8 University of Michigan
17.9 Wesleyan University
18.0 Dartmouth College
18.1 University of Southern California
18.8 Johns Hopkins University
18.9 Northwestern University
22.5 Williams College
22.9 Washington University
24.0 Middlebury College
24.5 Barnard College
25.2 Carnegie Mellon University
26.7 Emory University
26.9 Duke University
27.3 Colgate University
27.4 Amherst College
28.0 Hamilton College
29.5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
29.9 Vanderbilt University
Many of these colleges capture matriculations from all 10 high schools.
Exceptions:
University of Southern California - gets no matriculations from College Preparatory HS in Oakland, CA (where Swarthmore is #1)
Yale - gets no matriculations from College Preparatory HS in Oakland, CA
University of Chicago - gets no matriculations from Lakeside-Seattle (where UWashington is #1)
Michigan - gets no matriculations from College Preparatory or Lakeside
Princeton - gets no matriculations from College Preparatory or Lakeside
Wesleyan - gets no matriculations from Lakeside-Seattle
WUSTL - gets no matriculations from Dalton (where Cornell is #1), San Francisco U HS (where Stanford is #1), or Ransom Everglades (where UMiami is #1)
Tufts - gets no matriculations from Horace Mann (where UChicago is #1)
Dartmouth - gets no matriculations from Lakeside-Seattle
Williams - gets no matriculations from Lakeside-Seattle or Ransom Everglades
Berkeley - gets no matriculations from Trinity (NY) (where Harvard is #1), Horace Mann, or Lakeside-Seattle
MIT - gets no matriculations from San Francisco U HS or College Prep Oakland
Vanderbilt - gets no matriculations from Horace Mann, College Prep Oakland, or Lakeside-Seattle
Boston College - gets no matriculations from Horace Mann, College Prep Oakland, or Lakeside-Seattle
Middlebury - gets no matriculations from Horace Mann, College Prep Oakland, Lakeside-Seattle, or Ransom Everglades
Among their top 100 matriculation choices, I count 41 LACs, 41 private national universities, and 12 public national universities (the remainder are international/other school types).
Iām only looking at matriculations, not admission offers or cross-admit choices. So any āprestigiosityā preferences would be confounded by where students actually can get in. But my premise is that at this basket of prep schools (or maybe some better basket), students tend to have more freedom-of-choice than students at most other high schools. Therefore, their choices presumably are strongly influenced by prestigiosity. To the extent that may be true, there would be other confounding factors besides college admission selectivity, such as college size and location.
^^As a Wesleyan alum I am of two minds about @tk21769 ās new and rather interesting data: on the one hand, Iām pleased at my alma materā s #14 (out of 100) place finish. OTOH, I am appalled by the possibility that the main component behind these matriculantā s āfreedom to chooseā among so many great schools could be their ability to pay. Nevertheless, bravo, tk! Great work.
Harvard 1000mh
MIT-1000mh
Stanford-1000mh
Yale/princeton-999mh
Columbia/caltech998.5mh
Brown/duke-998mh
Cornell/dartmouth-996mh
Penn-996.5mh
Chicago-995mh
Just my opinion
Family wealth would be one significant factor influencing āfreedom to chooseā.
The ability to qualify for need-based financial aid would be another.
However, I donāt know how to isolate the preferences of those high-achieving low- to middle-income students who arenāt constrained by ability to pay.
I could create a basket of high schools composed only of boarding schools where the average SAT scores exceed 2000. Choate is an example. At Choate, matriculation numbers are high for many of the same universities I listed above. However, Amherst jumps to #13; Michigan falls out of the top 40. On the other hand, I wonder if I wouldnāt find the opposite pattern among high-scoring middle income public school students.
As Iāve said before, it is the persistence of questions like this that leads me to rank Berkeley as high as I do. More seriously, I think that most of the country (as represented here on CC) sees Berkeley (for undergrad) as a really excellent regional public, like Virginia or Michigan. Thatās why those schools are grouped together.
@tk21769 What surprised me the most on your top 30 schools list is the lack of love for Duke. I understand why MIT and Caltech donāt do well at top prep schools, but why isnāt there more interest in Duke?