Me neither. Duke is in the South. 
To most of us, the East Coast extends down to GA if not FL.
Interesting question. I don’t like to use “elite” because it sounds, well, elitist, which is an image that many schools in the northeast are trying to shed. I lean toward “selective” or “top-rated” even though I see the down side of focusing on admit rates or ratings. “Academically rigorous” or “academically excellent” also sound good to me as being more inclusive.
Of course, those descriptions expand the list of colleges enormously.
I don’t have a problem with calling elite schools “elite” any more than I do with calling the UK basketball or OSU football programs elite.
Are they elitist? Well, sure. They don’t just let any kid who wants to play basketball or football in to their program.
But if we don’t have a problem with calling the best football and basketball programs elite, why should we have a problem with calling the best colleges and universities in the country elite?
Call it a "competitive school. "
@lostaccount, except that some may not be and may actually be quite collaborative.
@gardenstategal How about “fancy-pants” schools. That way the great majority of kids who are not going there can snicker at every “Ivy-level” discussion. The Ivy kids probably won’t even notice, so it’s a win-win.
I generally call them “most competitive colleges.” This term is understood to include Ivies, the equivalents (UChicago, JHU, NW, MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Berkeley…) and the top LACs (Williams, Tufts, Swat, Mudd… ) Apologies to those I’ve omitted. But usually when one is talking about the academic advantages of the Ivies, it applies equally to this entire group. And people are free to silently assume the term includes their favorite top college.
If you want to annoy the most people, whenever you mean an elite college, just say Harvard.
On CC you can call them Pareto principle. 80% of the conversation regarding 20% of the reality. 
“The Reachie Reaches” (sort of a play on the old comic book character, Richie Rich).
“Top” implies the value judgement of better. A more accurate phrase would be “most popular” or somewhat less accurately “high status”.
Elite
Re Duke, East Coast liberal colleges, and going to college close to home:
I have a friend who grew up in a small town in Nebraska, with parents who were both religious and conservative. Boys played football, girls did beauty pageants and cheer, everybody went to church. Their first child went to Yale and became sort of a hippie software developer who has spent his entire adult life in the sort of plural marriage the Jefferson Airplane sang about in “Triad.” This was not acceptable to the parents. When child #2 started looking at colleges, she was forbidden to go anywhere in the Northeast. So she went to Duke, and came home married to a foreign-born, atheistic Socialist. The parents were apoplectic. Child #3 was told that she was going to the University of Nebraska, that’s it. So she did . . . and then left for New York the day after she graduated, and within the year had moved in with a Jewish boyfriend (whom she later married).
High-reach
@Oldfashioned1 "@Much2learn “Dad 1 seemed like a religious conservative … he also sounded like it was not clear to him why students don’t all just attend the nearest college to their house”
… I’m not sure if it’s sheer close-mindedness, a control thing, or both."
Basically everyone is like that where I grew up in a rural Michigan. There are about 80 students in a graduating class, the average ACT score is 19, and the highest ranked colleges that any of this year’s seniors are attending are Western Michigan and Central Michigan University (gotta love Facebook). Most will attend community college, work in a factory, or join the military.
There is a little bit of conservative closed-mindedness and frustration, and local ministers don’t help with their fear mongering that if your kid goes away to college they may comeback as a gay, satan-worshiping, cannibalistic atheist liberal who lurks around bathrooms for opportunities to attack your wife or daughter (lol). However, for the most part, parents did not attend college, and they just don’t know what they don’t know. I remember asking my Dad what business people do for work and he said, “They push papers around.” My Mother’s understanding of algebra was to shake her head and say, “Why would anybody try to do math with letters?” Once you understand the amount of information that they have, it is much easier to understand their perspective.
Still, it was still funny to observe the culture clash.
@JHS boy I bet there’s a story behind the upbringing of those three kids to so utterly reject their upbringing. It’s fascinating. And now I have to go look up those lyrics…
There are some conflicting agendas there!
You know what, MOD? I don’t think they really did reject their upbringing. I know two of them, one really well and one casually, and I’ve met the third once, and the parents a few times. They loved their parents; they loved what they did growing up. They just wanted to live slightly different lives. Their parents certainly felt rejected, but I think with time they got over it, or mostly got over it. In communities of highly educated professionals in the Northeast, the two women come across as wholesome, frank farm girls (although they were never really farm girls – their dad was a small-town banker) who were cheerleaders and beauty pageant contestants. That’s pretty much unlike anyone else they know.
I would never use the word elite—sounds way too haughty! I like using top tier, it’s a list that I didn’t compile–US news did!