What exactly is a Top Tier college? On the USNWR rankings (which I don’t really trust very much), anything with a numerical ranking is considered first tier; yet, another older USNWR ranking said 1-50 was first tier, 50-150(approx.) was second tier, and so on. Here, on CC, I’m reading stuff like Cornell and Tufts are second tier and RPI and NYU are third tier. I’m really confused about these tiers. What ranking means a good college? I am getting nervous now that all my acceptances/rejections are coming in.
This a much discussed and long debated question, BUT ONE THAT CAN NEVER BE RESOLVED. CC’s archives are replete with opinions, which might be worthy of your review.
Some individuals view HYPSM only as the top-tier National Research Universities. Consequentially, that means that the remaining five Ivies (62.5 percent), Northwestern, Duke, Berkeley, Cal Tech, UVa, Chicago, Hopkins, WU/StL, Vanderbilt, Rice, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, etc. are not “top tier.” Many would agree that exclusion of some or all of institutions is unwarranted.
Is Tufts a second (or third, or even fourth) tier university and RPI a fourth (or fifth, or even sixth) tier university? That is COMPLETELY dependent on where YOU establish segmentation lines (and why YOU do so).
In my opinion, however, the idea that an institution ranked by US News as top 100 – or even as 50 – should be axiomatically perceived as “top tier” is unreasonably inclusive (not to say that such LACs and Research Universities aren’t HIGHLY reputable).
One hundred colleges out of >4,000 baccalaureate granting institutions certainly sounds pretty tippy top. I think you need to refine your definition. Maybe, include “prestige value”, or “snob appeal”. Something along those lines. Otherwise, I’m not sure what values the term “top tier” are really measuring.
I believe this argument would be facilitated if there were some agreement on another aspect of this terminology.
For example, can it be agreed that there are exactly 5 tiers?
- Top Tier :-)
- Second Tier
- Outstanding Selective School Tier
- The Peoples' Tier which includes the great majority of 4 year colleges, all of which are quite good and competent, (and the tier in which the great majority of students study)
- Basement Tier - Everything else and not too desirable.....
Re post #2: Come on, @circuitrider, the raw 100 of 4000+ numerical statistic is truly MEANINGLESS. I ask you to consider the following:
a) US News ranks Saint Louis University, the University of Missouri, the University of Nebraska (Lincoln), and the University of New Hampshire at #99.
b) It subsequently ranks Auburn, SUNY Buffalo, and the University of Dayton at #103.
Do you really want to assert that these seven universities are “top tier?” Label them in whatever manner pleases you, but a certainly level of granularity is mandatory for evaluative words to be meaningful . . . not every kid on a soccer team is excellent (despite America’s “feel good, indulgent, medals for all” penchant) and not every university is top tier.
It would be hard enough to determine tiers if the rankings (USNWR, THE, whatever) were actually not garbage.
The wording of my question was bad and I meant something a little different. Basically, my question is NOT “what ranking = a certain tier” but “what ranking is an academically good/excellent school”. Now, I know that US News’ rankings are not super-accurate and should not be read too closely, but I believe they are useful as a rough guide - of course, going to MIT would be more academically enriching than going to the unranked state school which invests more in sports than in education.
Here on CC I see posts that call pretty big state flagships (Washington, Wisconsin, UIUC, Minnesota) “mediocre” or “bad” schools, while in general conversation, those labels are reserved for community colleges and similar institutions.
@TopTier
I definitely wouldn’t put those on the same level as “top 20” schools; you’re right about that. Then some people on CC consider the “lesser” ivies (whatever they are) to be low-quality schools… that seems crazy to me.
There are no official tiers. So tiers are by personal definition only. I have seen reference to top 100 schools as Tier 1 the rest of the ranked US News schools as tier 2 and the rest tier 3 and that seems reasonable. There are a good deal of academically excellent schools and at large schools different students will be getting a different education depending on the effort of the student and perhaps the major. That is why my friend from CSU Fullerton was accepted to Caltech for grad school, why someone from SFSU was in Juliet’s cohort in the PhD program at Columbia (and she herself was from a small LAC, not listed in US news top 50 lac)
@TopTier
I guess, I’m waiting for you to supply the “granularity”. If it’s snob appeal, or curb appeal, why not just say so? Btw, I have no dog in this race. Your metrics have been quite kind to my university in the past. 
@circuitrider (re post #8): “Granularity” can’t be exactly or quantitatively defined; that’s precisely why there can be no resolution to the ceaseless question asked by the OP. However, it’s certainly not snob or curb appeal. I responded to your earlier post to this thread by listing the seven universities closet to #100 in the latest U S News assessment of Research Universities, and I then asked you a specific questions. Please answer it.
@TopTier
First of all, let’s at least agree that this entire exercise fits into what might loosely be described as a “First World” problem. Every one of the seven institutions you named draws a minimum of hundreds - and in some cases - thousands of students from abroad, illustrating once again that the American system of higher education is still the envy of the planet. But since you insist, none of them would make my personal list of the top 100 baccalaureate granting institutions in the United States. You made the common mistake of restricting your search to research universities only. I would submit that there are some pretty good LACs out there that would knock all seven out of the category. In fact, anyone can come up with a list of 80 colleges just combining the Useless Spending News’ top 50 national universities with its own top 30 small colleges.
@circuitrider:
First, I absolutely agree re LACs – and there are MANY – that are excellent.
Where, based on your prior posts to this thread, we likely disagree (hopefully, disagreed) is a term like “top tier” really has to have some broadly accepted meaning (even if it cannot be precisely defined) to be useful. The seven universities I listed are not very distinguished (you state as much in post #10). However, they certainly are reputable and they perform very worthwhile societal functions. ALL – and I do mean all – I objected to in post #2, was your thesis that axiomatically all institutions ranked <100 were BY DEFINITION top tier. That’s neither helpful nor accurate, in my opinion.
it is a chicken and the egg argument. certain schools draw a certain type of student(those students overall have the drive to be more successful) so it is not that one school say HARVARD has a better biology major or business program, it is the people who attend those programs are more likely on a trajectory for success and attended harvard for the validation.
you should ignore the tier and rankings and find a school you feel comfortable at.
There is no set definition of top tier. For one person anything outside of HYPSM may not be considered top tier while for another person a school in the top 50 school would be considered top tier. It is all a matter of personal perspective. The fact is that there are many great colleges and universities out there.
@ayprcwbjmy As an advisor, I encourage my students to make their own list to measure schools by. There are many different third party ranking systems. Use them simply as a starting point. Shanghai ARWU, Times Higher Ed, QS World, US News, Forbes, and Payscale.
I guess there’s no way to tell whether a university is good or not. What annoys/confuses me is that here on CC I read posts blasting schools such as Michigan, UWashington and the like, which is at odds with what I hear elsewhere
A “good” university for you is one that fits your personality and interests and allows you to thrive. There are countless examples of people who attended schools other than Harvard or Yale and were not hindered in their paths to success. I second the idea that “top tier” is more of a personal concept.