@eyemgh “Caltech…is widely known as basically a terrible undergraduate experience”
I was thinking something similar. Cal Tech and University of Chicago are the two schools on the list that I view as better for grad school than undergrad.
Although, Chicago does seem to be headed in the right direction by backing off the severity a bit. They also appear to be headed toward adding engineering. I think those are two big steps in their favor.
I think there’s not much doubt that the graduate programs are better at nearly all of the schools on your list. Certainly that is true of Harvard, Princeton, UChicago, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and JHU.
Uchicago has been turning the corner for over five years now. New dorms, undergraduate focus, new course, , lots of academic and pre professional advising; great relations with the law and Booth business school. Major outreach for the college. Very obvious momentum. Shows in consistent upswing in USNWR ranking. Hence all the complaining from UChicago old-timers on CC who don’t like that fun no longer comes to die at UChicago.
@eyemgh elite in terms of equal respect and perceived capability. For example, a employer will most likely see a Harvard and Yale grad as equal and someone from either of those institutions is capable.
If you’re an elite school, your graduates should have influence in more than the region where the school is, or more than one discipline. Now of course the public universities are going to have more alumni so it’s likely they’ll have some national impact, but a school whose grads just stay in one part of the country without moving the needle is not really elite. And that’s basically HYPSM, Chicago, Columbia, maybe Michigan, Berkeley. The other schools don’t have any real national reach.
@ANormalSeniorGuy, and there’s where I have a problem. Elite is about perception not about demonstrated reality. In fact, nowhere in the USNWR methodology do the results of a student’s education come into play. Shouldn’t the metric be how employable someone is? How happy they are? Something, anything along those lines?
@chrchill
The Maroons have made some good improvements, but they are still primarily a staging area for grad school.
All of the other schools in your top ten do better for student average salaries. I don’t think they will be a top 10 school in rankings like The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, and Niche without higher average salaries.
@theloniusmonk “but a school whose grads just stay in one part of the country without moving the needle is not really elite. And that’s basically HYPSM, Chicago, Columbia, maybe Michigan, Berkeley. The other schools don’t have any real national reach.”
I am not sure that is true. College Factual ranks the schools by geographic diversity: https://www.collegefactual.com/rankings/diversity/location/?show_messages=1
All of the @chrchill top 11 are ranked above Chicago except Cal Tech.
@Much2learn salary upon graduation only matters of kids don’t go to graduate schools / professional schools. Uchicago has kids doing that in spades. And the key is they do exceptionally well in graduate schools placement. The geographic diversity ranking is of no significance.
@Much2learn - that ranking is on the geographical diversity of students at the college, not where the grads go after graduating.
"Again, top ten BY WHAT METRIC? Caltech has and continues to produce some of the world’s top science, yet is widely known as basically a terrible undergraduate experience. Not one, but two Caltech/JPL profs told my son not to even apply. Their words: ‘It’s not an undergraduate institution.’ "
By your same logic,how exactly do you propose measuring undergraduate experience? Wildness of student parties or quality of interaction with professors?
Most undergrads I know at Caltech care exceedingly about the second factor, and love the fact that every single one of their classmates is smart and science/math literate. For them it is a dream college experience.
@eyemgh alright then lets roll with employability (if thats even a word). What are your elites then?
@reuynshard, what I propose is that each and every person vet and rank schools based on the criteria that are important to them as individuals. For some, it’s wildness of parties. For some, the weather. Others…sports teams. They are all legitimate to that individual.
For straight up academics, class sizes would be important to me. Percentage of classes, labs and discussions taught by TAs is nice to know. Depth and breadth of coursework in the area I was studying would also come to mind. Facilities accessible to undergraduates is important. Job placement would be something I’d want to know.
As for Caltech, there’s nothing wrong with being around smart people. There are lots of schools where that can be said, but where the teaching is known to be good. Harvey Mudd right down the street is a perfect example.
@ANormalSeniorGuy, indeed, employability is a word. 
http://www.ed.ac.uk/employability/staff-information/what-why-employability-important
Again thought, this is a problem with the term elite. Take Cal Poly for example. They could certainly be considered elite in producing Mechanical Engineers with very high employability. They have close to 100% engineering job placement into very well respected companies and labs year in and year out. How they stack up for something like say, Nutrition…maybe not so well, not elite. That’s why ranking schools at all is a little silly, because schools do some things better than they do other things.
@eyemgh very true. Is there such a thing as an intelligence monopoly in rankings? In that, the schools ranked 1-5 in the general are seen as having high employability just due to intelligence rather than program? Or is employability all based upon the program? Also, side note here, what would your rank be for business (does not have to be business majors, but just what schools do companies consider elite)?
“there is wide consensus about what I would call the 11 top 10 schools: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UChicago, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Penn, Duke, JHU and Dartmouth”
This is not the right list for Computer Science.
This is not the right list for someone who wants a small primarily undergraduate college / university.
To me, this implies that individual students need to figure out what is right for them, and not be too influenced by the rankings.
As one example (of a failure to do this): There was a post on CC recently from a student who wanted to go to an Ivy League school to study computer science, because they wanted to go to a top school. The top schools for computer science aren’t in the Ivy League.
@ANormalSeniorGuy, Look at where the American born CEOs of Fortune 500 companies went to school. Sure, some went to schools that could be considered elite, but most didn’t. Don’t get me wrong. Lots of smart students go to schools that could be considered elite, but it’s precisely the fact that they are high achievers and not the school, that determines their success. They succeed no matter where they go. Yet,with this ranking frenzy there’s a misconception that you have to go to a “top” school to be a success. It’s simply not true. Ask Tim Cook next time you’re at Apple. He went to Auburn.
@DadTwoGirls Note that half of the list is not Ivy at all. Ivy or not is not the point., These are generally speaking the elite top schools. For computer science, I am sure you would concede that MIT, Cal Tech and Stanford are the top choices. I would put Berkeley in there as well. Uchicago just hired their key guy for CC.
a few of the ivies are actually pretty strong in CS, Cal Tech is good but not in the caliber of Stanford, MIT, UCB or CMU, those and UM would be the top-5, here are the top undergrad CS:
tier 1 - Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, CMU, UM
tier 2 - Harvard, Illinois, Cornell, Harvey Mudd, UCLA
tier 3 - Purdue, Princeton, Cal Tech, Penn, USC
Again, based on what? If you base your assessment on who has the most employees in Silicon Valley, arguably a reasonable metric since SV is the hottest bed for CS on the planet right now, many of the schools above don’t crack the top ten and several “lowly” ones do. There’s the top 10, in order, below.
University of California, Berkeley
Stanford University
Carnegie Mellon University
University of Southern California
The University of Texas at Austin
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
San Jose State University
University of California, San Diego
Arizona State University
I live in silicon valley and can say that a lot of employees from SJSU are from their masters program, also SJSU does not do a lot research at the UG level that some of the other schools on my list. I also purposefully tried not to be too SV biased and take a broader approach, if you look at companies like Amazon and Microsoft in Seattle and nationally you’ll see schools like Michigan and Purdue.