<p>
Have you lived in Asia or Europe? For better or for worse, UCLA is extremely highly regarded and is probably the second famous American public school internationally. California has served as an entry point for millions of Asians to the U.S. so there’s a high degree of exposure and visibility for the Far East to schools like Cal and UCLA. I would say Illinois and Michigan are neck and neck following UCLA and Cal with regards to international prestige. That’s certainly the case in India at least.</p>
<p>
While there might be outliers, USNWR is generally pretty good at data collection and does a good job given the monstrous task it has. Also, elite universities like the Ivies, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Caltech, Northwestern, Duke and JHU have better things to do than fudge data to boost their USNWR rankings. Nothing USNWR does can affect the reputation of the 15 best school in the U.S. It would just make USNWR irrelevant if it tried to do any form of serious gamesmanship.</p>
<p>I’m not so sold on LAC’s however. These schools besides AWSMP (the 5 best LACs) are relatively unknown and stand to gain the most by lying to Robert Morse and USNWR.</p>
<p>To the original question posed in this thread, decide based on fit. All 3 of these schools have roughly equal fame at the undergraduate level and each of their own advantages and disadvantages.</p>