So, chzbrgr, no such thing as elite liberal arts colleges – Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, etc?
What difference does it make how elite is defined?
“It’s those schools that you would be shocked someone turned down, except for financial reasons or for another member of the group.”
Otherwise known as yield.
Stanford is #1 in yield, Harvard is #2.
@SwimDad99 I hesitated about LACs because none of them get the “wow” reaction from the public that the schools I listed do. If we were including little-known schools, I would add Deep Springs, perhaps the most elite of them all.
@northwesty - Berea College is right up there, so is BYU 
I think they’re 3 and 4, along with UA Fairbanks.
@chzbrgr Since when does a public wow factor into what makes a school elite?
I think for major national institutions itsa big part of it.
I think you need to consider the broader definition of the term. It really has two meanings, according to the OED. The older meaning is based on social class: “a group or class of people seen as having the most power and influence in a society, especially on account of their wealth or privilege.” Another meaning is “a select group that is superior in terms of abilities or qualities to the rest of the group or society.” The Ivies, once the domain of society’s upper crust, originally fit the first of these definitions, but as they became more meritocratic from the 1970s forward, they established themselves as elite under the second definition as well—but they still retain the aura of old money and deep ties to the inner workings of the Establishment, so to that extent they probably count as elite under both definitions.
Most other research universities, public and private, can claim elite status (if at all) only under the second definition. Many here on CC would measure that by things like undergraduate admissions stats or reputational standing with the general public. Like most academics, I’d focus more on the strength and depth of their academic programs and faculties across a broad range of disciplines. By that measure, schools like UC Berkeley and Michigan are right up there with Harvard, Stanford, and Chicago.
But “elite” can also be relative to a subcategory. AWS are elite LACs. UC Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Virginia, and UNC Chapel Hill are elite public universities. MIT and Caltech have elite engineering programs—along with UC Berkeley, Illinois, Michigan, Purdue, and others. It just depends on the category you’re measuring them against.
“@northwesty - Berea College is right up there, so is BYU I think they’re 3 and 4, along with UA Fairbanks.”
OHMOM –
I thought about putting in the caveat that of course you had to exclude the outliers when talking about yield – BYU, Nebraska/Lincoln etc. etc. etc.
But I figured everyone would know that those schools are irrelevant for a discussion of eliteness. But of course CC is the endless/pointless flyspecking zone. Thanks for sharing your irrelevant information.
The purer metric than yield is YTAR – yield to admit ratio. That gets rid of BYU and Berea.
But I look forward to you flyspecking that as well. [FYI, I already know about the service academies and state schools on that metric. Free or low IS price obviously drives up yield.] Sheesh.
The short definition is “a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.” Some will define it more broadly than others. I tend to think of it narrowly because it is difficult to make a description more superlative. If you describe Harvard and (pick your university that is pretty good but not Harvard) as elite, it does not leave enough room for differentiation.
The only schools I think of where I would consider graduates on fairly even terms to Harvard for elite status are Stanford, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Cal Tech, Cambridge, and Oxford. Others would be at least a slight cut below.
You can have elite public schools, with public being the qualifier. At an undergraduate level, I’d probably say they are Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UVA, William and Mary, and UNC. None of these would rank generally with the group above. LACs would include Williams, Amherst, etc.
This is an improvement over yield, but it too can be gamed, using ED.
No one turns down the service academies for financial reasons, but army and navy are still considered elite by some.
I think it is safe to say what is not elite: any state university, even Berkeley.
I don’t mean this to be snarky…but why does this matter…at all?
My kids attended elite colleges – UChicago and RISD. But the term “elite” never entered our discussions or consciousness in the college planning stage. We were looking for the best higher educational experiences that the kids could get. We recognized that there were a few dozen colleges and universities that would provide an excellent learning and growing experience for my son. We thought there were perhaps a dozen colleges that would provide what my daughter was looking for. They applied to schools that met a threshold of quality (in their opinion and ours) but that had a variety of degrees of difficulty or competitiveness in admission. They weren’t constrained by resources, as we had put together enough money for them to attend any college without needing financial aid.
As I have posted before, neither kid as much as glanced at a college ranking or general guide. They talked to people, they worked with their parents to identify a set of 5-7 colleges for each of them to apply to. They selected those colleges from an only slightly larger list for active consideration. The key selection criteria were program quality and type (e.g., for my daughter, only art schools were prioritized – of those she applied to, only CMU was not strictly an “art school”). My son included the state flagship, my daughter expressly excluded it. (“I don’t want to find myself in a college class sitting next to kids from my high school.”)
Most engineering/CS folks would strongly disagree…especially with Berkeley considering its departments in those areas tower over those of every Ivy and are direct academic peers of MIT/Caltech/CMU/Stanford.
One niece in my extended family happily turned down admission to a few private elites…including some Ivies to attend Berkeley on a full-ride engineering scholarship because as far as she and her engineer parents were concerned…it was a no brainer…Berkeley in engineering is part of the creme de la creme apex…why pay more to attend a school which isn’t part of that apex?
Also, many of Berkeley’s Arts & Sciences departments are comparable/superior to many Ivies/peer elite private colleges.
In my experience, when most people say, “Elite,” they mean the school their kid attends or better. However, within that group they believe all the schools are, “About the same.”
I agree with, what does this matter? Is it just to put them in this box so parents feel better? I sense this is a regional thing, from the middle looking outward, it seems east coasters like to put things in special boxes maybe cause there are so many schools there, while west coasters generalize; they see the elite as Stanford, UCB, MIT, and the Ivies. Then there are the rest, that are not elite.
An elite athlete is Olympic or professional caliber - differentiated significantly from mere mortals. I would follow that same logic whenever using elite. Simply calling someone or something elite doesn’t make it so. UNC Chapel Hill - a good school but certainly not elite. It may seem based on the challenge for OOS kids to get in when they take mostly NC kids, but that makes it exclusive to NC, not elite.
For some people, a Rebecca Minkoff purse is elite, for others it is Burberry or LV. Not sure what it matters, I can never imagine myself saying “elite university” out loud in a conversation with anyone. Top school, great school, yes, but would never say, “Oh that’s an elite school!” ick.
Top 25 plus the schools my kids went to.
What’s considered elite doesn’t necessarily correspond with USNWR or other lists. For instance, despite not being in the top 25, Reed has been considered top-shelf elite by everyone at my public magnet and most academics/people knowledgeable about US colleges/universities.
On the flipside, despite my LAC being within the top 25, I nor many older LAC alums would consider it to be elite. And certainly not most of my public magnet classmate peers. Respectable, yes. But not elite.