@marvin100 I didn’t read your comment.
I am making an observation which I think might be tied to Stanford being outranked by those 3 schools for several years in a row.
@marvin100 I think it takes some time to for the entire world to catch up. It has only been in the last 6-7 years or so that Stanford has risen to truly challenge Harvard. Harvard definitely still has the strongest international brand but Stanford is quickly approaching. Pretty much every international ranking places Harvard, Stanford at the top. So yeah Harvard is still number 1 but Stanford is a very close second. At least within the US and also Europe this is the general perception and you see people choosing at least equally or even slightly more Stanford over Harvard. Hence the over 80% yield rates that both have. I think there is no denying that these two schools are the top dogs of US higher education, with MIT, Princeton, Yale following close behind.
@texaspg I think this is a choice Stanford has made for some reason. It is not like it does not have the money to do it.
Apologies, @texaspg – I thought you were responding to my comment.
And @Penn95 - “catch up,” really? The top performers in China and Korea are ahead, and they’re very savvy college shoppers. I don’t think perceptions here are behind, just different. Either way, you claimed global recognition, and my (substantial) experience says otherwise.
sbjdorio, am I reading this right? You’re a high school student with over 4500 posts and are a senior member? How
can you rate universities like beauty contestants? With a fraction of a point dividing them? Duke bounced up on basketballs. Stanford rose because Silicon Valley rose around it. And on and on. This U.S. News ranking obsession is one of the worst things that ever happened to American higher education.
One point is clear. As America falters in so many ways, its best universities are still most of the best in the world.
No, sorry, you did not read that right. I said, “if” I’m a high stats high school student. I am not, in fact, a high school student. 
I work with high school students applying to colleges.
The obsession about rankings for some people really is unfortunate. There are kids and families making themselves crazy over this. Kids and parents aspiring to colleges that are highly ranked but poor fits, parents pushing their kids. Crazy application numbers and low acceptance rates keep rising.
FWIW, anecdotally from my D’s (SoCal) friends, Stanford is now the “it” school. Harvard is obviously also a beacon (get it!) but if you asked her high-achieving friends/schoolmates/teammates Stanford would be the dream.
I think, at least for west coast kids, it has become the most popular/sought after.
I agree with @CaliDad2020 re Stanford.
@penn95 - Stanford had to cut staff rather than cut FA during 2008-09 downturn. They have improved some FA starting this year and are trying to do more for their grad students in terms of housing and stipends. I suspect they wont change the need aware policy for internationals in the near future based on other changes they have been making requiring money.
May be taking care of grad students is a good thing since they may now be able to unionize.
@marvin100 - no worries. I see I posted right below you but I was reading other posts before yours wondering why S is lower and was trying to see if my answer flies.
Certainly Stanford’s rep worldwide is huge, but that also takes into account its grad, med and PhD programs, most of which are stellar. Princeton, which is not the overall grad powerhouse that Stanford is (P’ton’s grad programs are awesome, but there’s no business, law or med school), suffers on a global rep scale because of it, but not all that much – it’s still top-10. Yale also falls a bit in global rankings, even though it does have arguably the world’s best law school. MIT is usually top-5 with Harvard, Stanford, and two of three from Oxbridge and Princeton. The U of Chicago and Columbia also have massive international reps, probably in no small part based on all the Nobels they have accumulated. Berkeley also can be found in the top 10 of some global rankings.
But, again, global rankings tend to measure grad/pro/PhD research and prestige, rather than operational excellence at the undergrad level.
I think each of HYPSM (and Chi and Col) are great in undergrad academics – no secret there. I think relative advantages among them are:
Stanford: CS and the Silicon Valley connection, climate, top dog in the West.
Yale: The residential colleges, great humanities and social sciences, “try it out” class scheduling.
Princeton: Highest focus on undergrads among these schools, eating clubs, and the senior thesis
MIT: Top Engineering, ease of choosing or switching majors, the Wellesley connection
Chicago: Hard academics/intellectualism, their version of a core, Economics
Columbia: NYC, the Core, the partnership with Barnard
Harvard: Leadership factory, final clubs, centuries-old prestige
As I and others like to say, there are lots of outstanding places to attend for a Bachelor’s degree, the above seven obviously included. No kid should choose based solely on rankings or rep; rather, he or she should choose based on fit and finances.
What is “prestige”, “perception”, or “rep”?
How are they defined and measured?
I’d rather go by the kinds of measurements used by the major rankings, notwithstanding concerns about “gaming”. Most of those concerns seem to focus on the admission stats. Not only do admission stats comprise a rather low percentage of USN ranking factors, they also correlate rather strongly with many other factors (some of which aren’t even included in the rankings). Schools with low admit rates and high average scores almost invariably also are schools with relatively big endowments, high instructional spending per student, high faculty salaries, small class sizes, high 4y graduation rates, high rates of alumni-earned PhDs, etc, etc. Universities at/near the very top tend to have high numbers of affiliated (alumni/faculty) Nobel laureates and other academic distinctions.
So we can quibble with this or that statistic, but they do tend to be mutually corroborating. When someone argues that a single statistic CAN be gamed, that does not necessarily mean it IS being gamed, or even if it is that it makes a very significant difference. So unless you can account with data for the statistical difference that gaming makes, all you’re really doing is poisoning the well. If we’re not to trust the numbers, what’s a better basis to compare colleges? “General perception”?
In somewhat of a contradiction of perspective, individuals have appeared to be extremely confident on this thread with respect to commenting – particularly regarding “tiers” – on general perception.
All this jockeying about which school is better than which school is interesting, but at the end of the day, I really wonder how much difference a school will make for a student who attends one of the top 10 schools or even one of top 30 schools vs the other, provided you compare folks graduating with the same majors and generally choosing the same kinds of professions.
Major, industry and individual talent would all probably trump the school name, so does it really matter among all these excellent schools?
No one appears to have cited the Times World Reputation Ranking 2016:
which has:
- Harvard
- MIT
- Stanford
- Cambridge
- Oxford
- UCB
- Princeton
- Yale
- Columbia
- Caltech
The Times ranking is consistent with the opinions upthread about Harvard and Stanford. However, MIT figures more prominently in world reputation than posters have credited. Using @Penn95’s granulation, MIT belongs in Tier 1a.
Just anecdotally, among my many friends around the world, the universities that evoke “wow!” are Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and UCB. Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Caltech, etc. are not as well known and/or highly regarded.
Did USNWR publish a list of the universities that switched into National Universities (ie., beside Villanova)?
Any articl/analysis of the changes- or just the lists?
@MYOS1634 : If you can’t find anything from U.S. News, you could try “Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education,” the template for their categories.
I meant … Usnwr doesn’t actually write anything?
no - they pretty much don’t. But they do write rankings… I bet its a huge part of their business model. Not just college rankings either, all kinds of rankings. People love them.
When the printed edition becomes available on October 4th, it’s likely they will include some description of the changes.