<p>They are not necessarily THAT prestigious even for their own respective students. I have 2 friends who attended BYU and they went there because they got a scholarship. He’s a ranked tennis player (# 89 nationally). The other is a Mormon. They both like BYU eventually, but they are students who couldn’t hack a top 25 school. </p>
<p>The difference between those schools and Cal is that the top scholars, academicians, professors, school presidents, High School Counselors, students and employers do not think very highly of those schools like they do Cal or Michigan. </p>
<p>All major surveys and league tables or rankings rank Berkeley as a top school when the respondents are academicians, employers, high school counselors and educated students, even if the scale is national. Berkeley often ranked ahead of schools like Vanderbilt or Emory or Rice using the demographic I mentioned. Therefore, when scholarship/student grants would come into play (as it is a standard practiced at top private schools), school attractiveness comes into play as well. Majors play a role as well, though not a big factor for some students.</p>
<p>I wonder if a young bright chap from New York would be more attracted to major computer science at Vanderbilt than Berkeley when Berkeley matches the $$ offer of Vanderbilt. For the same price, I would bet Berkeley would win in the cross admit battle against Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>"Well, a lot of people would not consider Rice, Emory, Vanderbilt or Notre Dame as a top 20 school for undergrads too. Different students have different list of top 20 schools. For example, CMU is a top 20 school for me and Emory is not. USNews says otherwise. But USNews does not dictate what those top 20 schools are. "</p>
<p>Well, a lot of people would not consider Berkeley in their personal Top 20 either. I wouldn’t. It’s a great school – that holds little personal appeal. So? Different strokes for different folks.</p>
<p>In your hypothetical Berkeley vs Vanderbilt, why can’t you conceive of someone preferring a small, beautiful private school over Berkeley? The Berkeley setting is – well, it’s a certain taste. Either you like that faded hippie vibe or you don’t. BTW, I am pretty familiar with the campus as I have a client right there. I can be suitably impressed by the academics while simultaneously thinking that it’s not the greatest campus on earth. I’m also not crazy about a campus that draws so heavily from one state. I consider that a drawback because if I wanted that for my kids, I’d send them to UIUC at half the price. There is an insularity about Berkeley that I find off putting – and part of that insularity is demonstrated by your repeated failure to open your mind up enough to the fact that a given student might easily, hands down prefer Vandy (or Emory, or ND) over it. It’s like you can’t conceive of a world that doesn’t revolve around Berkeley.</p>
<p>So phantasmagoric, you’ll agree then that your survey says that Texas A&M is indeed more prestigious than, say, Dartmouth? And you’ll live by that?</p>
<p>Of course - I am not saying that either one of us is correct. But this stuff about her having twins who went through college apps this year, etc. is irrelevant. The topic here is knowledge of prestige, which is from accumulated experiences, and any additional information you just gave seems like a weak attempt to establish an appeal to authority.</p>
<p>Even the fact that a few posters here agree that Pizzagirl’s assertion is off is irrelevant. We’re all going based on what we’ve heard, experienced, learned - but since that varies wildly from person to person, none of them is actually correct. It’s all anecdotal.</p>
<p>That’s why I presented actual data from a reputable survey organization. Which was received with derision (“rofl” - honestly I’m getting sick of people inserting snide remarks like that, just really harms a civil discussion). Clearly she and others would rather rely on anecdotal data that’s “empirical” in only the most liberal sense of the word.</p>
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<p>Exactly - and the point of contention is whether Vanderbilt and Berkeley are on students’ radars or not. I (among others) contend that Vanderbilt is no more on students radars than Berkeley is.</p>
<p>(Aside: I also object to putting Vanderbilt and Emory with the other schools you listed, not just because of my own knowledge of school’s relative prestige, but of actual surveys done of schools’ prestige, actual revealed preferences, cross-applicant data, cross-admit data, and objective measures of various different indicators of quality. Lumping them in with the rest is, IMO, a bit suspect in itself. Of course, that’s a debate for another day.)</p>
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<p>But you’re getting into a separate issue here. Of course they would rather send them to their local schools, for any variety of reasons: they are cheaper, they’re closer to home, they’re perceived well in the area, the schools are known to be keeping in with the values of the region (politics or otherwise), etc.</p>
<p>That’s completely different from the issue at hand, which is the perception of prestige (and the idea that “being on students’ radars” is a proxy for prestige). They can want to send their kids somewhere and still know that College X is more prestigious.</p>
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<p>If you want to continue on this tangent, then yes, we can do that. But it’s a bit of a bird walk from what Pizzagirl’s challenge to the point I made previously.</p>
<p>Even offering such data you ask for is pointless given that it’s completely anecdotal. Personally I’d listen to a Gallup survey, or a comprehensive international survey, much more readily than I would to a bunch of narrow data points presented to demonstrate a point (especially a point that I find irrelevant to my point of contention).</p>
<p>(For the record, in case your comment on “an opinion that is formed thousands of miles away” was directed at me: I’m from Chicago and spend much of my time there. My own knowledge holds as much water as any other Chicagoan’s.)</p>
<p>Yes, because in this case both are so relatively uncommon - and mentioned by so few - that there’s an acceptable margin of error. More importantly, as a point I was hoping you would make without my having to do it for you, familiarity is a basic prerequisite for prestige. People cannot hold a college in high regard without first being familiar with it. Dartmouth is like many LAC’s: their lack of national renown makes it hard for them to come up in surveys of prestige. TAMU, on the other hand, is a public school that gets its name out there more - this familiarity that begets prestige. In the end, that TAMU ends up higher in prestige demonstrates exactly the nature of layman’s prestige in general: those that people are familiar with are more likely to seem prestigious. That’s how layman’s prestige works.</p>
<p>You were attempting to show some distinction by pointing out that people didn’t reflect on “the quality, selectivity and resources of the top schools.” But layman’s prestige does not care about those. Sure, those are highly correlated with prestige, and an easy argument could be made that those are what cause prestige. However, when it comes down to it, people answering in that survey thought about what school has the most prestige in their minds - first, they’re familiar with it, and second, they understand it (in non-concrete terms) to be “the best.” The actual reasons that caused them to think that (the resources, etc.) are irrelevant.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, my point is that you seem to disagree with the findings because the results did not match up with what you - and other people - consider “quality.” But it did not set out to find “quality,” because as we all know, prestige is not quality (yes, there’s a strong correlation, but I’ve noticed far too many times on this site where people get angry at others when they diss a school’s prestige and the other person starts listing facts and figures that demonstrate the school’s quality. But the person who originally made a claim about prestige was not talking about the school’s quality).</p>
<p>It’s a fine distinction, sure, but fine distinctions have no place in layman’s prestige, which is very rough and - let’s be honest - largely useless in the end.</p>
<p>If prestige isn’t quality (and I agree that it isn’t necessarily), then why care about it at all? If it’s largely useless, then why bother linking to and talking about it as though it were meaningful?</p>
<p>In your TAMU example – TAMU simply isn’t on the level of Dartmouth. So the fact that a bunch of people in Texas do consider it more prestigious? Who cares? Why would that ever be a data point to consider – “this school’s not as good, but a lot of people have heard of it and think it is”?</p>
<p>Look, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t point proudly to the survey and say “See? vandy’s not on the list but Berkeley is!” and then say it’s meaningless that TAMU beats Dartmouth.</p>
<p>“Dartmouth is like many LAC’s: their lack of national renown makes it hard for them to come up in surveys of prestige. TAMU, on the other hand, is a public school that gets its name out there more - this familiarity that begets prestige,”</p>
<p>I personally think that being known among those who are in the know / sophisticated is of far, far more importance than being known to the masses. A lot of LACs ooze prestige and the fact that Joe Blow has never heard of them just makes it all the more special.</p>
<p>Revealed preference has nothing to do with prestige either! Most students in this country would prefer Ohio State over Amherst because they’d prefer a big sports school and wouldn’t know what Amherst was if they tripped over it. Doesn’t make OSU more “prestigious.” What Joe Blow knows of, or prefers, is irrelevant. Joe Blow would prefer a Big Mac to a meal at the French Laundry, too.</p>
<p>Of course - this is where you and I don’t disagree at all. Prestige is correlated with quality, and prestige, esp. layman’s prestige, actually doesn’t matter (as I said, “largely useless in the end”). If you trace this line of discussion to my post, I was responding to the erroneous claim that “the undergraduate prestige of a university is considered to be the greatest measure of its quality and Vanderbilt is arguably slightly superior to Berkeley in this regard.” Since that was based on an obvious anecdotal bias, I presented an actual survey with statistical significance and carefully controlled variables. You scoffed at it and made a distinction between familiarity and prestige, and I implicitly argued that it was splitting hairs in this case.</p>
<p>I also wasn’t saying that it’s meaningless that TAMU beats Dartmouth in this survey - quite the opposite: it’s very meaningful (as I explained verbosely above). Again, my intent was only to correct for a misleading statement. It is not true that Vanderbilt is “slightly superior to Berkeley” in prestige, because the survey shows that Berkeley comes out far ahead. Also, though this is less relevant, the difference between TAMU and Dartmouth is much smaller than the difference between Berkeley and Vanderbilt, as I noted: “in this case both are so relatively uncommon - and mentioned by so few - that there’s an acceptable margin of error.” The acceptable margin of error would not be able to explain the difference between Berkeley and Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>So yet again, my intent was to point out where there’s an erroneous conclusion based on erroneous (anecdotal) data. As I said a few posts back, “I’m not here to defend Berkeley - plenty of others are doing a bang-up job of that - but when misleading facts are presented, I feel the need to speak.”</p>
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<p>Agreed! But that doesn’t change my point in the first place, which was merely to correct for an erroneous claim, using actual data.</p>
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<p>That was just an aside (as I explicitly said): I was more objecting to lumping Vanderbilt and Emory in with other privates in his off-topic point on where people would rather send their kids instead of OOS public schools (which brings in a slew of other variables that are outside the scope of the topic at hand). Of course my objection here opens up a whole new can of worms about whether they deserve to be lumped in with the others, so perhaps it was better not to have included that aside at all.</p>
<p>Prestige is important, and I cannot understand why you still haven’t acknowledged that yet. Prestige is what drives companies to innovate, improve and earn. On the part of the consumers, it’s what makes people feel proud, because it could be a testament of their high status. In short, prestige is victory. </p>
<p>In the context of academic institutions, prestige is often a measurement of school achievements as great places for the advancement of knowledge and scholarly works. As a result, prestigious universities gain respect from their peers. Employers would take note of that and use that for their advantage. </p>
<p>In the context to this thread’s topic:</p>
<p>**How do law schools decide which students they will admit? **</p>
<p>1. College GPA. The higher your grades, the better. Grades can account for 30-40 percent (or even 50 percent) of the admission decision. The college you attended and the major in which you earned your degree often are taken into consideration, so attending Berkeley is an advantage. An excessive number of courses taken passed/not passed could work against you because law schools cannot interpret your accomplishments accurately. Many law school admissions officers assume that a GPA would be lower if all courses had been taken for a grade.</p>
<p>So clearly, respected professional schools consider the prestige of the undergrad school of the applicants. Coming from a prestigious school would give you an advantage.</p>
<p>**Prestige is a combination of familiarity and respectability. When one of the two is absent, prestige level suffers. **</p>
<p>TAMU is perhaps more well known than is Dartmouth. But Dartmouth gains more nods from the top employers, academicians and top students. </p>
<p>Berkeley has got the nods of the students, scholars and employers and Berkeley is a well-known school name nationally and internationally. Therefore, Berkeley is prestigious. Now, you’d ask why would a school aim to be prestigious. Kindly refer to my post just above this.</p>
<p>Prestige among whom? I only care about prestige among people who are knowledgeable. Prestige among laymen is solely familiarity and isn’t associated with quality, then who cares?</p>
<p>The fact that the average layman thinks H is the best school is meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. If tomorrow they thought it was OSU, that wouldn’t make H any less high quality. </p>
<p>This is why the whole “but in MY area, no one has heard of it!” is so meaningless. RML’s Calif buddies haven’t heard of Vandy. In my area, Berkeley isn’t on the radar screen. So what? Neither of these measurements reflect on quality, which both schools have, albeit with different looks and feels. Why can’t people just call these things a draw?</p>
<p>“The college you attended and the major in which you earned your degree often are taken into consideration, so attending Berkeley is an advantage. An excessive number of courses taken passed/not passed could work against you because law schools”</p>
<p>This doesn’t tell me that they look at Berkeley’s PRESTIGE in evaluating an applicant. This tells me they look at Berkeley’s QUALITY. Do you think a student at say Swarthmore is an a disadvantage in law school apps because Swat isn’t widely known by the average Joe?</p>
<p>Just to be clear, here, RML. Should I have counseled my D not to apply to / attend Wellesley since it’s not widely familiar and hence isn’t “prestigious”? Should I have told her to go to TAMU instead?</p>
<p>But that’s not quite true. Familiarity forms the basis. But even the layman can be more familiar with a school and still find others more prestigious. We are all familiar with some schools much more, but still know that others are more prestigious (e.g. I’m very familiar with UIUC and UCLA but I’m also familiar with Berkeley and Northwestern and can say that they’re more prestigious from my own perceptions, not even counting my knowledge of concrete data/facts about the two like resources, faculty, etc.). </p>
<p>Prestige among those who matter (employers, academia) does matter more, in my opinion. But this goes back to the original issue I had with what someone claimed about Vanderbilt and Berkeley. Among those who matter, Berkeley is still ahead of Vanderbilt statistically. Just look at employer surveys, academics surveys, international surveys – heck even counselor/teacher surveys have corroborated that data.</p>
That’s correct. Best examples of which are Caltech and the top LACs such as Harvey Mudd, Williams and Amherst. </p>
<p>Those four schools aren’t really quite popular in mainstream America. But the top academics, students and employers recognize them as excellent, high-caliber schools. Therefore, to answer your question, the academic people, employers and students views and opinions are important in establishing school prestige. </p>
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Wellesley is more prestigious than TAMU, in my opinion. And, it would not hurt in your daughter’s case that Wellesley was a perfect fit for her too. TAMU may be more popular. But I doubt if the top academics, employers and students would view it superior to Wellesley. Wellesley scores better than TAMU for student selectivity and peer academic review on USNews. Additionally, I would reckon that Wellesley has higher employment rate, and their graduates earn more than TAMU grads do, on average. </p>
<p>Now, is Wellesley more prestigious than Berkeley? I seriously doubt it. The data would show that Berkeley has a huge lead over Wellesley in terms of school prestige. Berkeley has a commanding lead over Wellesley on Peer Assessment and Counselor Ranks. Although Wellesley has a slightly higher average SAT scores, Berkeley is still more selective than Wellesley, in general. Berkeley also has higher salary scale of graduates. Berkeley grads are targets for IBs and MCs or top finance jobs. Wellesley graduates aren’t really. Berkeley grads are more represented at top professional schools too. I could go on and on, the data would show that Berkeley is more prestigious than Wellesley. </p>
<p>Saying that would not mean any disrespect for Wellesley. It only means berkeley is more prestigious. It does not mean Berkeley is more attractive. They are the same reasons I could use when I compare Berkeley to Harvard. that would not in anyway to disrespect Berkeley. it’s just that, all data would lead us to believe that Harvard is more prestigious than Berkeley.</p>
Could be. But a school has to achieve a certain level of respect amongst employers before it can create such culture. A school like TAMU could not afford to create a culture of breeding students to feed to high finance and consulting jobs. It has to gain the respect of the top employers first. </p>
<p>Additionally, there’s a reason why many IBiers come from prestigious schools, HYPSM, Wharton, Dartmouth, Duke, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern, Chicago, etc…</p>
<p>In this area, Emory, Rice and Vanderbilt are almost nonexistent.</p>
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It is a professional school. It always has been, though verging on vocational. But engineering is considered a professional degree.</p>
<p>I agree Pizzagirl. I personally never cared about what high school kids and the uneducated masses think. That is why rankings such as Revealed Preferences or the general Gallup poll provided by Phantasmagoric above aren’t very telling. </p>
<p>But the link to the Gallup poll he provided also has a reputational among educated people (at least some post-graduate studies). Very few universities made the list for some reason, but those on the list are all legitimately excellent. It would have been interesting if Gallup had extended their survey to a larger group of educated people.</p>
<p>Academe’s point of view is well captured via all the different peer ratings. </p>
<p>We can determine corporate prestige by looking at the number of companies that recruit exclusively on select few campuses.</p>