<p>I don't know much about Cal, but Michigan's undergraduate programs are not much unlike Michigan's graduate programs in that the same professors teach both.</p>
<p>I was speaking about prestige-wise. Going to graduate school at Mich is A LOT more prestigious than going to undergrad for Umich.</p>
<p>i think so as well, like top academics who go to places like Yale, harvard, stanford commonly get PhDs from Michigan and Cal</p>
<p>Yeah, but not those top students from Mich and Cal- they don't go to top PhD schools like the Ivy league, Berkeley, UCLA, Mich. </p>
<p>Going to Harvard for a PhD vs undergrad is sort of different, too. Sure, the gap at Berkeley or Mich PhD vs undergrad might be bigger, but often times it isn't that significant. Berkeley engineering and business, for instance. And English. Seriously, quality can easily be found. Stop worrying so much prestige and focus more on quality.</p>
<p>The point is, going to Harvard for u-grad is still super-prestigious among ugrad colleges. Going to umich for grad is super-prestigious among GRAD colleges. See the point I'm making?</p>
<p>PS: THIS THREAD IS ABOUT PRESTIGE THAT'S WHY WE'RE TALKING ABOUT IT.</p>
<p>I agree that Harvard is clearly more prestigious an undergraduate institution than Michigan...then again, Harvard is clearly more prestigious than Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and several other elite universities.</p>
<p>all of you guys forgot IIT - Indian Institute of Technology. </p>
<p>From waht i understand its the most difficult school to get into inthe world</p>
<p>rejects attend HYP and such. </p>
<p>the link to the 'world's most prestigious universities' is definitely not accurate. how can you say that u of wisconsin is more presitigious than dartmouth?</p>
<p>Oh no not again...That ranking is for UNIVERSITIES. Dartmouth is basically a LAC, 80% of its programs don't even have grad students! Some (including myself) think that is a tremendous asset. Instead of giving grants and research opps to grad students, udergrads get 100% of that attention. The outcome is amazing. These state school people will never understand what having an average of 5 people in my classes, or TWO thesis advisor, or a 10K thesis grant will ever mean...</p>
<p>
[quote]
all of you guys forgot IIT - Indian Institute of Technology. </p>
<p>From waht i understand its the most difficult school to get into inthe world</p>
<p>rejects attend HYP and such. </p>
<p>
[/quote]
</p>
<p>sorry, but it's so farfetched. I've once met my Indian friend at MIT, he was ranked 6th for the Indian entrance examination and he studied for his undergrad at IIT Kanpur. He said that the Indian scholars who attend HYPSMC are generally top cream students in india ranked between 1-80 for the Indian entrance exam. So please stop the ridiculous notion that IIT rejects attend HYPSMC and such and such...</p>
<p>Slipper1234 may be on to something. While Harvard, as the oldest college in the country, may be the most prestigious college, and Chicago may be the most intellectual college, Dartmouth just may provide the best of both worlds, and may offer one of the best all around educational experiences available.</p>
<p>LOL at whoever said vanderbilt was more prestigious than chicago.
googlefight.com is a decent indicator of prestige in my opinion as it reflects how many times the two universities appear in search results. the more people talk about the university, the more it will show up, right?</p>
<p>"university of chicago" 82 mil
"vanderbilt university" 14 mil</p>
<p>Below is my rankings of colleges by prestige. I think my ranking a whole gives a good indication of how the schools rank. My method of calculating prestige is pretty basic and not foolproof so I do realize that some colleges may be higher or lower. My interpretation of prestigious is not how academically renowned it is, but how recognized the university is as a whole.</p>
<p>MY LIST(number of millions of search results on googlefight.com)
1. Stanford University 165
2. Harvard University 132
3. Columbia University 110
4. University of Michigan 106
5. Cornell University 100 (a little higher than it should be, but clearly higher than UPenn, Brown, and Dartmouth in terms of recognition by an average person or internation person).
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 95
7. University of Chicago 82
8. Yale University 73
9. Princeton University 68
10. University of Pennsylvania 67
11. Carnegie Mellon University 54
12. Duke University 49
13.Johns Hopkins University 45
14. Northwestern University 41
15. New York University 39
16.University of Virginia 38
17. University of Southern California 30
18. Brown University 28
19. Georgetown University 24
20. Boston College 24
21. Emory University 14
22. Rice University 14
23. Vanderbilt University 14
24. Dartmouth College 12
25. Washington University-St Louis 2.7 mil ( another reason they need to change their name! in this case, i don't think numbers accurately portray prestige although having such a hideous name does affect their prestige)</p>
<p>Here's what I did. I searched each university in quotes(ex. "Stanford University") and used the full name of the university. While I recongize that some colleges are often referred to by shorter names, like UVA, CMU, NYU, USC, I believe this method to be fair because full names are normally used only in a formal context. For example, in a situation one would refer New York University as NYU, one would also refer Stanford University as Stanford. Neither NYU or Stanford meet the criteria for a search result so Stanford University does not get an unfair advantage over a school that is often referred to by a shorter name, like NYU. I can explain this more if necessary.</p>
<p>^^first off, you must have been REALLY bored to do all of that</p>
<p>I believe that in order to get a stronger analsysis using your criteria, one must use all ways in which a college is referred to; you'd have to search NYU and Stanford and Harvard in addition to Harvad and Havrad and every other possible spelling and then add up all of the results you get for each college...but truly, it'd be a waste of time</p>
<p>Did you try Berkeley? I think not, as they list with at least 217 million, but the general idea seems like such a poor measure of anything besides who has lots of websites.</p>
<p>"Did you try Berkeley? I think not, as they list with at least 217 million, but the general idea seems like such a poor measure of anything besides who has lots of websites."</p>
<p>it doesnt have anything to do with who has more websites.. number of search results is based on where the word is used... for example if you search "harvard university" and a lesser college like "bob jones university" in the domain of a competition website like rhodes scholar etc., you will find more search results of harvard than bob jones university. almost anywhere on the web where "harvard university" appears in text will result in a search result. it has nothing to do with websites. harvard university does not have 132 million websites.</p>
<p>berkeley does not have 217 million. i didnt include berkeley because there is no fair way to include them. i would argue that berekely is one of the most prestigious unis in the united states. search "berkeley" on google. many search results don't even have anything to do with the university, berkeley. "university of california" has 390 million, which would include 8 colleges. even if the other 7 colleges only added up to 50% of the search results(which it wouldn't because of ucla), that would put berkeley at a max of 180. In reality, i think berkeley would be about a quarter of all ucla results, putting it around 90-100 million and near the top of the list.</p>
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i think berkeley would be about a quarter of all ucla results
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</p>
<p>Not sure what you mean by that, but I do agree with what you said above about it being hard to calculate. But doesn't this apply to Harvard, too? How about "Harvard college?" I think it's safe to assume that Berkeley has at least 100 million matches from the different results I'm getting with different variations. But again, this method really doesn't do anything for me. And UCLA could (and probably many times will) show up as "UCLA" and not "University of California Los Angeles."</p>
<p>i meant berkeley would be a quarter of all "university of california" results</p>
<p>"But again, this method really doesn't do anything for me. And UCLA could (and probably many times will) show up as "UCLA" and not "University of California Los Angeles."</p>
<p>When Harvard is used to replace Harvard University, UCLA is used to replace University of California at Los Angeles. So it doesn't matter if University of California is referred to as UCLA in informal reference because in a similar reference, Harvard University is referred to as Harvard, which is excluded from search results since the University is not attached right after it.</p>
<p>Alright, do what you will. I think that if you're going to do it this way, you should include c major contender somehow, but again, I don't think this method proves much for me, so I don't really care. If you are going to do it a certain way, you should attempt to be fair (and not exclude major contenders), and I don't see much value in this exercise.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt kids seem to have trouble with literacy...the subject of the thread was "most prestigious," not "most fun" or "best balance of fun and academia."</p>
<p>Anyway, the northeast/mid-atlantic Philadelphia suburbs, Vanderbilt is never mentioned as a prestigious school...it's all Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Gtown, JHU, Berkeley, Amherst, Swat, Williams, Duke...that's about it.</p>