<p>I saw the Rich and Powerful Attending "ELite" Schools article, but what do you guys even consider to be an elite school?</p>
<p>I define it as an "elite school" if one's major is top 10 in the country</p>
<p>(I posted this also in Admissions, to see what the under grads think in comparison to you guys)</p>
<p>
How do you figure this out? What rankings are you using?</p>
<p>An elite college is basically just a rich prestigious school whose name is recognized even by people who don’t know about colleges. So the Ivy League schools are elite, but so are places like MIT, Stanford, Duke, Caltech, etc.</p>
<p>University of Yakisoba. Acceptance rate: 0.2%, Average SAT: 2400, Average GPA: 4.0, Most popular major: Noodle Theory.</p>
<p>Soba noodles are okay. Just okay.</p>
<p>Some schools that come to mind:
-magnet schools/charter schools seem to do a pretty good job on competing against private schools since they have a different focus and attract students from different backgrounds (more science oriented).
-IB diploma seems more like a pyramid scheme, but it builds overall balanced students through the focus of interdisciplinary studies.
-American boarding schools seem to have a lot of money, legacy connections, successful alumni, and ties with colleges
-International schools develop students who in the future may consider applying to American colleges, the school in some cases has well funding since (parents of children tend to be business/diplomatic related) and the tuition is high, but overall there are a handful that are competent.
-Although I am not familiar Montessori method schools seem to develop interesting student skills, but I am not sure of how effective they are at a higher level of education.</p>
<p>EDIT: shoot I thought the OP was talking about “elite” high schools.</p>
<p>Go to US Rankings News Report. They have a list of the top colleges. I would say the first ten or twenty are elite. </p>
<p>I agree with the above post, but add that specific programs at schools at lower schools on the list may also be elite. “Elite” is subjective, but is typically defined by schools with low acceptance rates and high average testing scores. These are the most well-known schools. </p>
<p>I’d say top 20 on US News and World Report, pretty much. </p>
<h1>0, I win.</h1>
<p>@letmeseetheworld how dare you</p>
<p>Berkeley is not an elite school to me unless you got into EECS. I attend a school that is far from elite–I consider an elite school one that has the societal right to diss / look down upon people attending the schools that don’t have so much prestige.
Maybe Stanford or a well-known school outside of California.
–That’s what comes to mind when someone calls their school “elite.” Or better than others.</p>
<p>I think “Elite” has more to do with faculty strength than student strength, since the faculty does the teaching… so I look at the Peer Assessment score. Anything above 4.0 is pretty good. Maybe 4.5 or higher would be “elite”.</p>
<p>Schools with strong teaching, recognizable names.</p>
<p>The ones that match such things the most are, in my opinion:
-Oxbridge
-Ivies
-Stanford
-MIT
-Caltech
-Duke</p>
<p>Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Caltech</p>
<p>Based on strength of faculty, it would go something like this:</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Chicago
Columbia
Stanford
Berkeley
MIT
Penn
Dartmouth
Caltech
Brown
Cornell
Northwestern
Duke
Michigan
Vanderbilt
Wisconsin
UNC
UVA
Georgetown
Notre Dame
Georgia Tech
UCLA
CMU…</p>
<p>(Keeping LACs out of that list – doubtless their faculties are competitive)</p>
<p>^ That list isn’t remotely in order. It’s just your utterly unsubstantiated opinion. Not helpful at all. Dartmouth’s faculty won’t outperform Duke’s faculty on a single quantifiable criteria. The same can be said of Brown’s faculty.</p>
<p>The website really shouldn’t allow you to make such posts without mentioning that this is your subjective opinion!</p>
<p>Top 4 schools based on faculty scholarly productivity: <a href=“A Tool to Assess Faculty Scholarly Productivity | Duke Today”>http://■■■■■■/1osVEdJ</a></p>
<p>1). Harvard
2). Stanford
3). MIT
4). Duke</p>
<p>Top 4 schools based on Reuters Highly Cited Researchers List: (primary affiliations only)</p>
<p><a href=“http://highlycited.com/”>Highly Cited Researchers - Clarivate;
<p>1). Harvard
2). Berkeley
3). Stanford
4). Duke</p>
<p>Yet Duke is ‘ranked’ 15th on your arbitrary list.</p>
<p>NAS members:</p>
<p>Duke - 24
NU - 21
Brown - 8
Dartmouth - 2</p>
<p>Also, in what world is Chicago’s faculty stronger than Stanford’s? Stanford literally has 3 times more NAS members on its faculty.
Columbia also has more NAS members on its faculty. Berkeley does too. Let’s not even talk about MIT. </p>
<p>That was a bad, bad list my friend. A very bad list indeed.
Did you pick names out of a hat? ;)</p>
<p>hidall1, Many people would disagree with your list too because faculty productivity and cited citations is not the usual way a program is evaluated for undergraduates. I’m not sure what the OP meant by “if ones major is top”. If you mean what does the lay public think of as the most elite universities (note that the term “best” is not being used) they would probably include the world’s oldest and best known competitive universities in England and the US. There are certain schools that are almost always included and others that can appear on the list. If you ask someone in the US or UK, they’d probably include Harvard first. Then the order gets a little less certain. The next group would include Cambridge and Oxford, Yale, Princeton, MIT and Stanford, but the order would be debated. Next large grouping would probably include Duke, U of Chicago, UPenn, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell-but order would differ. When US people talk about the Ivy+ schools they usually list Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth. Cornell and Brown. Can’t speak for the rest of the world. </p>
<p>Maybe I ranked Chicago so highly based on their Nobel winners and Duke so lowly based on their relative lack of same.</p>
<p>I realize that is a pretty limited basis and apologize if it caused me to underestimate Duke’s faculty.</p>
<p>It was off the top of my head anyway and was generally a half-rear-ended generalization. Hehe </p>
<p>anything with an average SAT under 900</p>