Ask random people in the general public for the best 25 colleges and universities, judging by academics, and you’re not going to get the same list reported by a survey of CC intelligentsia. The list would be a combination of fame, reputation and familiarity. Many top schools would be excluded (I love LACs, but not one would make the list), and the order would have some surprises. Here’s what I think the public would converge on:
- Harvard
- Yale
- Princeton
- MIT
- Stanford
- Columbia
- Duke
- UC Berkeley
- Cornell
- Caltech
- Notre Dame
- UVA
- Georgetown
- NYU
- UCLA
- Michigan
- UNC Chapel Hill
- Dartmouth
- Brown
- BC
- Johns Hopkins
- BU
- Wisconsin Madison
- Penn State
- UPenn
A few top schools I think would be forgotten/wouldn’t make the cut:
Chicago
Northwestern
Wash U.
Vandy
Rice
What do others think?
This is my best guess for a northeast perspective:
- Harvard
- Yale
- Princeton
- MIT
- Stanford
- Columbia
- UPenn
- Chicago
- Dartmouth
- Duke
- UC Berkeley
- Cornell
- Georgetown
- Northwestern
- Johns Hopkins
- Brown
- Tufts
- Rice
- Notre Dame
- Michigan
- Vanderbilt
- Carnegie Mellon
- Washington U
- UVa
- Emory
I think it varies by region - however I think Notre Dame has extremely strong laymens prestige. I would guess Caltech, Brown, Dartmouth would all be lower. I would also give a bump to any school in a high profile D-1 sports division (Duke, Stanford, etc.)
I think for the average person the list would like the following. CC is assuming the average person knows alot more schools than they would:
-Harvard/Yale
-Stanford/Notre Dame/Duke
-Vanderbilt/UVA/Georgetown/North Carolina/BC/UCLA/UC-Berkeley/Michigan/Wisconsin
-NYU/BU (these two would go way higher for internationals)
I think where I live (Boston), it would be:
-Harvard
-MIT
-Yale
-Stanford
-Columbia
-Cornell
-Georgetown
-Vanderbilt
-Chicago
-UC Berkeley
-Dartmouth
-Penn
-Brown
-Johns Hopkins
-Northwestern
-UVA
-Michigan
-Carnegie Mellon
-Tufts
-BC
-NYU
-BU
Just from talking with friends and parents.
First you have to clarify—What’s an average person? (it’s a big country)
The average person/general public would know of HYP (but not Brown, and they would confuse U Penn with Penn State) and they would know schools with good football teams, and possibly their regional flagship. No LACs. That’s it.
Outside of the US, the average person would know the schools with the biggest graduate engineering and comp sci programs because that’s where most foreign students end up. And Harvard.
In Phili top 10
Havard
Princeton
Yale
Penn
MIT
Stanford
Columbia
Duke
Cornell
JHU
There’s no such thing as “the average person.”
I live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan so Penn State, Wisconsin Madison and BU would not be on be on the list. UPenn would be a lot higher than # 25. Probably 5 o5 6. Chicago and Northwestern would come in ahead of Notre Dame and UVA. Wash U and Vandy ahead of BC. Rice is still a bit of a foreign entity due to location but it’s increasingly mentioned in the same breath as Duke and Vandy here.
Side story: Many, many years ago (30+ years), a kid from our small city catholic school got into MIT. None of us were quite sure if we had ever heard of it…but I remember parents saying, “wasn’t he able to get into a college that’s a bit closer?”
Everything is regional. The average person on the street might know HYP. Maybe not all 3. I assure you here in Chicago Berkeley or UVA or Tufts wouldn’t make the list. Notre Dame and Northwestern sure would.
The OP is making the typical CC mistake of presuming his/her region is the same as the U.S. Time to expand your thinking. All college reputations are regional. Including the Ivies.
NYU doesn’t nearly have the bloom outside NY that some of you think it has.
Fairly sure Harvard and Stanford are pretty well known all over the world. I’ve lived in three countries, and that’s been pretty much constant in all three.
Here in Korea, HYPSM are almost universally known. Columbia, NYU, Williams, Amherst, UPenn, Cornell, Duke would be next on the list, along with UMich, Berkeley, Dartmouth, Caltech, Emory, Vanderbilt, UIUC, Purdue, UCLA, USC…
In India,
- MIT
- Stanford
- Harvard
- UC Berkeley
- Princeton
- Cornell
- Purdue
- UIUC
These colleges are highly represented among Indian applicants. Comparatively, a lesser number of people apply to other universities (the number might still be in hundreds considering the amount of people that apply from India).
All the universities are listed in random order
“NYU doesn’t nearly have the bloom outside NY that some of you think it has.”
Pizzagirl, that may be true in the US, but internationally, NYU is a beast, at least among high school students who dream of living in NYC while going to college.
NYU doesn’t have that much of a bloom here in NYC either unless you are talking about Tisch School of the Arts or the law school or the medical school. It certainly would not come in ahead of Dartmouth, Brown, Hopkins or Penn.