<p>The same argument could be made for Chicago.</p>
<p>There are five or six universities in the U.S. that are more or less universally considered elite. Those universities are HYPSM and Caltech. As you can see, Chicago isn’t among them.</p>
<p>Chicago’s in the next tier with the other twenty or so universities. It’s closer to those schools than schools like Cal or UCLA are (“top 10” or w/e.,) but it’s still not a part of them. At the end of the day, they are only peers to each other**</p>
<p>If you want to make your opinion of ‘elite’ so narrow that you exclude schools like Cal, you’d also be excluding a school like Chicago imo.</p>
<p>
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<p>the former is at least indirectly (but probably directly) tied to reputation, and the latter could probably be found at many universities. The rigor is probably different, but i doubt that makes much difference. UCLA is probably more rigorous than Calstate LA (e.g. reading graduate level texts is not uncommon) But Caltech (overall) is probably more rigorous than Harvard. I don’t think at the end of the day that the Harvard kids are left at much of a disadvantage.</p>
<p>**Caltech, if memory serves, wins the highest percentage of cross admits against Harvard and has been ranked ahead of it in multiple rankings. It’s also a direct rival of another elite MIT, which is why i listed it as the possible sixth. But there are many valid reasons why one might exclude it from the elite category.</p>
<p>Beyphy and RML have made the best arguments so far. </p>
<p>The Berkeley controversy can be summed up in two sentences. </p>
<p>Person 1: “Cal isn’t elite because its undergrad programs are weak.”
Person 2: “Yes, it’s true but the full strength of a university go far beyond undergrad.”</p>
<p>" I’m afraid the answer to that is, yes. But that’s just my opinion. Those two American schools still enjoy better name recognition, and, thus, more respect than those Japanese and Canadian schools in the political, academic and business community across the globe."</p>
<p>People with good self esteem evaluate excellence according to their own needs, desires and preferences. They don’t need to care what other people think. RML strikes me as the kind of person who walks outside but has to ask 20 people whether it’s raining before he comes to the conclusion that he’s wet. I’ve never seen any CC poster so obsessed with “what do people think of my school.” It’s the antithesis of how true elites think.</p>
<p>In my book, the strongest universities in the U.S., top to bottom and across all disciplines, are Harvard, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. MIT also deserves consideration despite lacking law and medical schools because it’s got strengths in some core humanities and social sciences disciplines in addition to its extraordinary strengths in STEM fields. Caltech is simply too narrow to count as a great all-round university, though it’s certainly an outstanding niche school. Yale is not as strong across all disciplines as H, S, and UCB, but still impressive. Princeton, lacking professional schools, is not a full-service university, but certainly strong in many core academic disciplines; I’d still count it in the top 10, but not the top 5. Outside the U.S., only Oxford and Cambridge belong in this group. That brings me to 8 (Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Cambridge, and Oxford, in approximately that order).</p>
<p>For the #9 and #10 spots it’s a dogfight between Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, and Michigan.</p>
<p>“In my book, the strongest universities in the U.S., top to bottom and across all disciplines, are Harvard, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.”</p>
<p>Actually, only Stanford is strong across all disciplines in this country bclintonk. Harvard is no engineering powerhouse and Cal lacks most of the major health professions. Really the only comprehensive schools that are truly strong across ALL major disciplines are Stanford with Columbia, Cornell, Penn, and Michigan (not necessarily in that exact order) following behind.</p>
<ol>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology</li>
<li>Cambridge</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>University College London</li>
<li>Oxford</li>
<li>Imperial College London</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>University of Chicago</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology</li>
</ol>
<p>UC Berkeley - 22
Columbia - 11
Penn - 12
Cornell - 14
Stanford - 15</p>
<p>Also JHU and Michigan are in the top 20. Not saying I totally agree with this but the usnews rankings are pretty standard</p>
<p>with Yale 11, Columbia 12, UCLA 13, JHU 14, Penn 16, Michigan 18. Throw out Caltech on narrowness grounds and Imperial College London on pro-UK bias grounds, and you’ve got pretty close to my list.</p>
<p>This is such a silly discussion because besides undergrad, students select to do their postgraduate studies at the schools with the strongest reputations in the field, not the school’s “overall reputation”. You would be a fool to turn down Northwestern’s Kellogg school in favor of Yale SOM just because Yale is a stronger institution overall for instance.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I agree with you goldenboy. A big “brand name” university has lots of additional advantages that go beyond the confines of a subject/program. These include: alumni programs, research environment, library resources, guest speakers/lecturers, archives, international experience, etc.</p>
<p>Also, for a variety of fields a company (or in academia, a hiring department) sometimes wants to flaunt that they have alumni from <insert big="" name="" university="">. I’ve seen this first hand.</insert></p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, given that people change professions approx 7 times during their careers, having a powerful brand name behind you can help you in a variety of professional endeavors.</p>
<p>these lists are way too American college heavy, for one London School of Economics is definitely in the top 10, in fact it would probably be top 5. La Sorbonne is also an amazing school</p>
<p>In terms of grad school strength (In no particular order, as per the question)
Harvard
MIT
Yale
Princeton
Chicago
Caltech
Stanford
Oxford
Cambridge
Berkeley</p>
<p>In terms of overall reputation I find the THEs reputation ranking to be reasonably accurate as long as the fairly ridiculous scores are ignored in favor of the relative positioning of universities.</p>
<p>In terms of undergraduate education, I would add Swarthmore and Harvey Mudd in place of Harvard and Berkeley, and move Princeton, Chicago and Caltech to the top of the list.</p>