<p>should absolutely be there – no question.</p>
<p>“Notre Dame should absolutely be there – no question.” </p>
<p>WHY???</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Who says those are the top 20???</p>
<p>These are the top 20:</p>
<ol>
<li> Yale</li>
<li> Princeton</li>
<li> Harvard</li>
<li> Williams</li>
<li> Amherst</li>
<li> Stanford</li>
<li> Massachusetts Inst. of Technology</li>
<li> California Inst. of Technology</li>
<li> Columbia</li>
<li> Penn</li>
<li> Chicago</li>
<li> Northwestern</li>
<li> Cornell</li>
<li> Swarthmore</li>
<li> Johns Hopkins</li>
<li> Brown</li>
<li> UC Berkeley</li>
<li> Duke</li>
<li> NYU</li>
<li> Michigan</li>
</ol>
<p>[College</a> Rankings](<a href=“http://toptiered.com/college-rankings.html]College”>http://toptiered.com/college-rankings.html)</p>
<p>But I would probably replace NYU with Dartmouth.</p>
<p>
Interestingly, Notre Dame made the top 10 in the [Dream</a> Colleges](<a href=“http://ir.princetonreview.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=372901]Dream”>http://ir.princetonreview.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=372901) survey.</p>
<p>I won’t bother to come up with my own prestige list, because I’m far too lazy and apathetic about it. Here’s the top 20 from the Revealed Preferences ranking:</p>
<p>1 Harvard
2 Yale
3 Stanford
4 Caltech
5 MIT
6 Princeton
7 Brown
8 Columbia
9 Amherst
10 Dartmouth
11 Wellesley
12 Penn
13 Notre Dame
14 Swarthmore
15 Cornell
16 Georgetown
17 Rice
18 Williams
19 Duke
20 UVA</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Haha I guess we’re slightly different 5 minutes away :P</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton
MIT
Stanford
Penn
Columbia
Duke
Brown
Hopkins
Cornell
Chicago
Northwestern
Dartmouth
Emory
WUSTL
Vandy</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li><p>Yale</p></li>
<li><p>Caltech</p></li>
<li><p>Columbia</p></li>
<li><p>Dartmouth</p></li>
<li><p>Brown</p></li>
<li><p>Duke</p></li>
<li><p>Penn</p></li>
<li><p>Cornell</p></li>
<li><p>UChicago</p></li>
<li><p>Northwestern</p></li>
<li><p>Rice</p></li>
<li><p>Johns Hopkins</p></li>
<li><p>WUSTL</p></li>
<li><p>Emory</p></li>
<li><p>Notre Dame</p></li>
<li><p>Vanderbilt</p></li>
</ol>
<p>NYU? On what planet?</p>
<p>Northeast-
My opinion: </p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>John Hopkins</li>
<li>UChicago</li>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>WUSTL</li>
<li>Emory</li>
<li>Notre Dame</li>
<li>Vanderbilt</li>
</ol>
<p>@RML,</p>
<p>Those were the top 20 universities as listed by US News: [National</a> Universities Rankings - Best Colleges - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-search]National”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-search)</p>
<p>Here on the west coast, where we don’t care about what NY bank you want to go work for, and don’t count who is giving money to their alma mater, we wouldn’t limit ourselves to USNW’s ridiculous list of top 20–but instead would actually include some schools from the west coast and the midwest that have strong engineering and business and medical programs–thus, my list:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>UC Berkeley</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Wellesley (mostly known because of Hillary C.)</li>
<li>Amherst</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Univ of Chicago</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Notre Dame</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>John Hopkins</li>
<li>Georgia Tech
Pomona would probably be 21st
Georgetown would probably be 22nd</li>
</ol>
<p>Nobody out here has ever heard of Williams or Tufts or Washington University in St. Louis or Rice or Emory. Vanderbilt is still considered a preppy school.</p>
<p>P.S. Note that I also left off Brown (where I applied and was accepted) and Cornell. Cornell is probably the better known, but just barely. Most people think it’s just a LAC that has a decent architecture school and is out in the middle of nowhere (and don’t even know it is in New York).</p>
<p>From a DC kid’s perspective (just at the high school): </p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Caolumbia</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Notre Dame</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>U Penn</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>WUSTL</li>
<li>Emory</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>UChicago</li>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>Vanderbilt </li>
</ol>
<p>The last are pretty much unknown</p>
<p>Because the top 20 included only national undergrad universities…thus why swarthmore, pomona, etc weren’t on the original list.</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton
MIT
Stanford
Dartmouth
Columbia
Cornell
Brown
UPenn
Johns Hopkins
Notre Dame
Duke
WUSTL
UChicago
Northwestern
Caltech
Vanderbilt
Rice
Emory</p>
<p>Obviously I am basing this list off what would be household names in my town and what schools I would have known as top universities before I began my college search. In no way is this a ranking of academics. I believe schools such as Duke and Notre Dame suffer a little because some people (myself included before I educated myself on colleges) believed these schools to be known for sports, not academics.</p>
<p>well im from socal and my opinions differ greatly from CalCruzer’s</p>
<p>“Nobody out here has ever heard of Williams or Tufts or Washington University in St. Louis or Rice or Emory. Vanderbilt is still considered a preppy school.”</p>
<p>i know at least 30 ppl personally, within a 10 mile radius from me, that have applied to multiples of these schools…and most ppl who are not completely slackers know of all of these
i do think vanderbilt is considered to be a rich, preppy school though
and my friend got into wellesley - and no one ever heard of it before she started showing interest in it and telling ppl about it
and everyone i know recognizes brown and cornell as being extremely prestigious</p>
<p>i think that bc i am from the west, i view east coast schools as having waaay more prestige than west coast schools. obviously berkeley and ucla are great schools - but bc so many ppl from where i live get in and end up going to these schools (especially bc we are CA residents and its cheaper), they have almost no prestige value at all for ppl where i live
its all about the ivies when it comes to prestige in my opinion</p>
<p>my rankings by prestige, not by what i think are the best schools
- Harvard
- Princeton
- Yale
- MIT
- Stanford
GAP - Columbia
- Penn
- Caltech
GAP - Brown
- Dartmouth
- Cornell
GAP - UChicago
- Johns Hopkins
- Northwestern
- Rice
- WASTL
GAP - Duke
- Notre Dame
- Vanderbilt
- Emory</p>
<p>i would like to hear how ppl’s list differ from the ranks of school with the most prestige, compared with those that are the “best” schools
because i personally think that a lot of liberal arts schools are way up high in the latter’s rankings though most ppl i know have never heard of most of them
like, i got into swarthmore - ranked number 3 on the USWNR LAC’s - and with everyone i talked to about it, less than three ppl had ever heard of it before, and believe me, i’ve talked to A LOT of ppl about colleges</p>
<p>but then again, for most ppl, it is all about the prestige isnt it? kinda sad…though i do know, and admit, that i have been sucked into the “i wanna go to the school with the best name” vacuum
but after being rejected by all the ivies i applied to, i figure “you know what? it doesn’t matter where you go, big or small, famous or obscure - all that matters is what you do with your life and what kind of person you become.”</p>
<p>sorry for writing so much</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I know, but USNWR’s top 20 for undergrad is not absolute. It wasn’t also based on prestige rank. It was primarily a ranking based on college desirability, or otherwise known as college convenience.</p>
<p>To play along with this game, I’d say Harvard is the most prestigious college for undegrad in the US. Yale, Stanford, Princeton and MIT follow. The rest are pretty even, save for WUSL, Emory and Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>By averaging the results from relevant past posts,</p>
<p>1 Harvard
3.15 Princeton
3.38 Yale
3.46 Stanford
4 MIT
7 Columbia
8.23 CalTech
9.23 UPenn
9.33 Dartmouth
10.08 Brown
10.38 Cornell
11.58 Duke
12.85 UChicago
13.54 Johns Hopkins
14.14 Northwestern
14.77 Wash U.
17.15 Rice
16.31 Notre Dame
19 Emory
19.23 Vanderbilt</p>
<p>Harvard
Stanford
Princeton
Yale
MIT
Cornell
Columbia
Caltech
Chicago
Brown
Dartmouth
JHU
Wash U
Duke
Vandy
Notre Dame
Rice</p>
<p>Vanderbilt may be considered a rich preppy school, but a lot of people have at least heard of it. I’m going there and I’m definitely not rich or that preppy lol</p>
<p>^^I never heard of it until I came to this site. It’s the same case with U Chicago, Wash U, and Rice</p>
<p>I didn’t know of Emory until my teacher told me about it, so I guess it does have some relevance here. I didn’t know until a large amount of these schools until I came here</p>
<p>WUSTL, Chicago, Rice, Cornell, CalTech, Northwestern.</p>
<p>Although I do say that Emory is getting a lot more love in my area because of how much I talk about it :D</p>
<p>Agree with Calcruzer-anyway, how about the top 30, that would include all the great schools mentioned:)</p>