<p>Prestige isn’t, by any means, the end-all when it comes to selecting a school, but it does play a role in it. I’ve found that throughout CC, there’s a lot of bickering about which school is considered “more prestigious”, and, usually with HYPSM, how prestigious a school is in the international arena.</p>
<p>After seeing a thread about Stanford’s reputation worldwide (and the lack of consensus), I thought maybe I’d start an informal survey on the international forum. </p>
<p>Please state (a) which country you’re from, and (b) in order (from most prestigious to least) how HYPSM, Oxford, and Cambridge fall in your country. I’d appreciate if you stuck to your country only. Don’t hesitate to disagree even for your country, since these things are often personal.</p>
<p>UK: (Probably)
1. Oxbridge and Harvard
(It depends on what subject you're doing for whether Ox or Cam is preferred, and most people have heard of Harvard, usually from Legally Blonde lol)
2. Yale (Most will have heard of it)
3. Princeton (Some will have heard of it)
4. Stanford
5. MIT</p>
<p>apprently some ppl in korea dont even know if Princeton, Columbia (they often say AAA that college in NYC is it any good?), Brown and Cornell to be good as UMICH (I'm not saying UMICH is bad, but UMICH cant compare to there top Ivy)</p>
<p>It is really hard to tell. Generally speaking, most Brazilians have little knowledge of the outside world (a consequence of living in a big, largely monolingual country where most people have low incomes). In any case, the most well-known international universities in Brazil are probably: </p>
<p>Because of the strong French influence on Brazilian culture that used to exist until let's say 40 or 50 years ago, a few older people (from my parents' or grandparents' generation) probably also heard of "La Sorbonne" (now broken into the various independent University of Paris units) and, perhaps "L'</p>
<p>I'm not answering the question at all because what audience are you talking about? Prestigious amongst university level academics, high school academics, the man in the street? The answers may be very different each time. </p>
<p>And I can't help noticing that, although we Brits are always accused of being class-ridden, prestige-obsessed discussions are at least 10 times more common on the American College Confidential than they are on equivalent British sites. So who's really class obsessed?</p>