<p>I read the 1st 10 pages of this thread and I noticed a lot of people were attempting to rank for ‘best’ public colleges, vs prestige - for example the ranking by SAT - which the OP was asking about.</p>
<p>Prestige is by definition about appearances, about regard (which, if I recall my hs french, means ‘to look at’).</p>
<p>pres·tige (pr-stzh, -stj)
n.
The level of respect at which one is regarded by others; standing.
A person’s high standing among others; honor or esteem.
Widely recognized prominence, distinction, or importance</p>
<p>I would think USnews’ nat’l uni , public, would be a pretty decent starter list, since 25 pct of their ranking is peer assessment - peers as in college administrators. </p>
<p>The larger and even more accurate notion of presige might be how well the college is known and <em>regarded</em> as good by the ‘boss [employer] on the street’, and maybe the ‘man on the street’. The larger question is ‘prestigious to whom?’</p>
<p>Just came across this link. It is consistant with I posted above about ‘prestigious to whom?’ To see the publics, you have to exclude the privates in the discussion. One poster in that thread put the following publics in the list of most prestigious (per in the chinese view).</p>
<p>As a school is generally ranked according to the strength of its PhD programs, the NRC rankings across the five disciplines comes into play here. Taking the top 4 out of 5 disciplines, the publics rank as follows (this is by memory, I can confirm tomorrow)</p>
<p>Now, if you want to factor in the rankings for the professional schools of Medicine, Law, and Business, UCSD slips down several slots, with the rest of the schools keeping their relative order.</p>
<p>The only other public university I would really match with Berkeley across the board, is Michigan…what is really fascinating is that Berkeley has no medical school (UC San Francisco the medical institution of the University of California), which means Berkeley is essentially unable to crack the Top 20 in overall college rankings because of the lack of a medical department.</p>
<p>A lot of this depends on where you live. Berkeley has the most prestige nationally and internationally, but from there it’s a crapshoot. On the West Coast, UCLA is considered on-par with Berkeley for undergrad, and perhaps even more so, with the increasing gap in selectivity (UCLA admits around 21%, Berkeley ~26% (including spring admits)). Few, if any, in SF/LA would place UVA, Michigan or UNC above UCLA in terms of prestige. However, if you were to go to Atlanta, UVA/UNC would probably be considered “better,” as would Michigan if you were to venture to Chicago.</p>
<p>Then again, prestige is overrated. Rankings matter in high school, but any great university will have more to offer than that.</p>
<p>“Now, if you want to factor in the rankings for the professional schools of Medicine, Law, and Business, UCSD slips down several slots, with the rest of the schools keeping their relative order.”</p>
<p>Kind of hard to ignore these isn’t it? Professional schools bring as much prestige to any university as any programs. To not include these schools and rankings is disingenuous. Berkeley, as great as it is, is not as well rounded as schools like Michigan. That’s why I maintain that Michigan is the best “all 'round” university of any of the publics.</p>
<p>“The only other public university I would really match with Berkeley across the board, is Michigan…what is really fascinating is that Berkeley has no medical school (UC San Francisco the medical institution of the University of California), which means Berkeley is essentially unable to crack the Top 20 in overall college rankings because of the lack of a medical department.”</p>
<p>I have to disagree with you on this one. There are other universities in the top 20 who don’t have medical schools as well, so I’m not sure it would really make a difference. However, if UCSF were a part of Berkeley, I would concur.</p>
<p>I think Maryland belongs in the top 10. It clearly has a top 10 student body among publics. Many of its graduate programs are top 10 among publics: Business, Education, maybe Agriculture, Comp Sci, Math, Physics, Criminal Justice, Sociology, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering. Also strong in History, Poly Sci, Mechanical Engineering…maybe just out of the top 10.</p>
<p>Wow, a post actually addressing the topic at hand! My congratulations, or should I offer condolences </p>
<p>This thread (as so many on CC) quickly degenerated into a parsing of USN&WR rankings and random variations on “my school is ranked by the Middle Tennessee Business Journal higher than yours in Graduate History of Basketweaving so there!”</p>
<p>“tenisghs, sorry, but nursing, public heath and social work aren’t all that prestigious.”</p>
<p>Medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and high level music/theater/dancing education are. Michigan has all four. To be honest, it’s Berkeley, followed by Michigan, and then so on from there…</p>
<p>If we’re talking about overall academic recognition, particularly considering graduate departments, Berkeley and Michigan would seem to have it sewn up. What would #3 be? UCLA maybe? </p>
<p>Virginia and William & Mary offer, to my mind, a superior undergraduate experience partly because of their smaller size. But with a few notable exceptions (Virginia’s law & business schools for example) they’re not contenders on the ‘multiversity’ scale. UNC sort of splits the difference. </p>
<p>Cal and UM are lucky that their flagships were so well-endowed back when their respective states were rolling in money. What will happen now? What proportion of their budgets are state-funded (at Virginia it’s 7%)?</p>
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