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<p>Exactly. Why is Harvard elite? Because the people hiring for the top jobs, publishing the books, and scheduling the interviews say it is. Don’t a lot of people at UMass work just as hard and learn just as much? Yes. Then why isn’t UMass elite? Because the Harvard graduates aren’t hiring, publishing, and interviewing them.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned Stanford is elite. Why is Stanford elite? What makes it an elite school? If Stanford is generally considered an elite school, why is Caltech not considered just as such? What about Harvey Mudd College? Is it not an elite school? What about Pomona College? Is it not an elite school too?</p>
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<p>You might as well try to quantify a school’s “niceness”. Go ahead and prove that Kansas State is quantifiably better in every objective measurement than Harvard. Harvard is still elite, and Kansas State isn’t, so it’s a pointless exercise.</p>
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<p>Why do we need to make a more acceptable list of elite colleges and universities? Is there a shortage on College Confidential? </p>
<p>Anyway, you seem to think it’s an on-off phenomenon – this college is elite, this one isn’t. As with anything, there’s a continuum. </p>
<p>And you keep failing to distinguish between elite and broadly known, and elite and only known to those-in-the-know. </p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the usual suspects are all elite and broadly known.
There is a whole host of schools that fall under elite and only known to those-in-the-know (examples might include Wellesley, Haverford, and Pomona just to name a few).<br>
Which do you care about? What everyone knows, or what the cognoscenti know?</p>
<p>What the elite know.</p>
<p>Sally Rubenstone makes a good point. I was in Texas briefly, and nobody got excited over where anyone went to college unless you were a UT grad. Being a Wharton grad didn’t carry much cred down there, haha. “Elite” is very contextual.</p>
<p>Don’t we already have USNWR for this?</p>
<p>I keep it simple. A college is elite if it ranks between 1 - 10 of USNWR. Yes, I don’t consider the entire Ivy League elite.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, </p>
<p>
That coming from you is just so ridiculously funny. As someone who claimed be in-the-know, what makes you think the vast majority of those in-the-know share your personal opinion!</p>
<p>Back on topic: As a guideline for you, you claimed Harvarford is elite. Why do you say Haverford is elite? what makes it an elite school?</p>
<p>sentimentGX4, don’t you think that’s a bit too narrow a definition of an elite school? For example, I am not a huge fan of Brown University. But I guess even I would not contest when someone says that Brown is an elite school. I do have reasons for claiming such. I am not so sure though if those reasons are generally acceptable to most people.</p>
<p>USNWR rankings top 20. </p>
<p>/thread</p>
<p>Criteria for elite status:
<p>Elite status consists of one or more of the above criteria, depending on the context in which said elite status is being discussed.</p>
<p>Well, I’d put it this way…</p>
<p>Presumably people with the highest ACT or SAT scores have the most options of where to go for school. So the school with the highest average ACT or SAT scores are the ones who are best able to attract the best students, since they are competing with all other colleges. If a college is considered the best choice by those with the most options, it is the most elite. So you could rank eliteness by the average test scores of enrolled students.</p>
<p>“Someone mentioned Stanford is elite. Why is Stanford elite? What makes it an elite school? If Stanford is generally considered an elite school, why is Caltech not considered just as such? What about Harvey Mudd College? Is it not an elite school? What about Pomona College? Is it not an elite school too?”</p>
<p>Stanford has a huge endowment, was the school at the center of the dot-com frenzy, and has the most number of prestigious professional schools and PhD programs after Harvard. In many places I have been to abroad, when people talk about the most elite university in the world, either Harvard and Stanford comes up (no Berkeley, no Yale, no MIT, no Oxford).</p>
<p>An institution becomes elite when it appears on one of 3 CC Forum Lists:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>CC Top Universities</p></li>
<li><p>CC Top Liberal Arts Colleges</p></li>
<li><p>Ivy League</p></li>
</ul>
<p>(insert tongue in cheek here)</p>
<p>I really think that for a lot of people, the whole conversation has become pointless. The selection processes are not objective, and what’s more, they cannot be made objective. The cost rules people in or out. Some people are limited geographically. You can attend an “elite” school and take a completely useless major. For most of us, you go to college to learn what you need to get the job that you want. You are no less “elite” of a doctor having gone to the University of (Insert State Here) than if you went to Harvard. You don’t make more money. You don’t have more patients. You just have a larger debt to pay back. We don’t live in Old England. We do not have patriarchs. People need to get over themselves.</p>
<p>@RML
Here is elite as defined by Merriam-Webster.
</p>
<p>In order to be “elite”, you need to be the best of the best. Now Brown is a good school, but does it really satisfy this criteria? </p>
<p>The existence of the phrase HYPSM already implies no. Subconsciously in or minds, we already have another set of tiers dividing the top 20 our 30 and Brown isn’t one of the nations literal best schools. </p>
<p>If you went to Brown and asked their students, “Is there any college you would consider better than Brown?”, they’d be liars if they didn’t reply yes. Harvard is better, Yale is better, and so on and so forth.</p>
<p>But if you went to Caltech or Stanford and asked their students the same question, you will find a starkly different response. These schools really are the best of the best and their students wouldn’t imagine being anywhere else.</p>
<p>In the literal sense of the word, not even the entire top 10 is “elite”. I can imagine students from Columbia or Chicago betraying their schools. However, 10 is the conservative estimate because some lower ranked schools such as Caltech truly are elite in the sense of the word.</p>
<p>^ Don’t you always have to base that on students? Since we’re talking about academic institutions, shouldn’t school facilities, curriculum and faculty be considered too? They too comprised the institutions.</p>
<p>It’s a social construction. While one can point to different influential factors, the use of a term does not fit some formula or cut off point so it’s rather silly to look for one IMHO. </p>
<p>Such questions emerge among kids who were weaned on college rankings, acceptance rates, and SAT scores. As if the world should be all black and white like that.</p>
<p>“If you went to Brown and asked their students, “Is there any college you would consider better than Brown?”, they’d be liars if they didn’t reply yes.”</p>
<p>If you went to Yale and Princeton and asked all their students, “Was this school your top choice?” The vast majority would be liars if they didn’t reply “no,” since those two schools are filled with Harvard rejects. If the schools weren’t their top choice, then they obviously believe there is a better school (Harvard), and does that disqualify Yale and Princeton as elite? I don’t think so.</p>
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You’re forgetting that my definition is already based off USNWR. I assumed USNWR applied those factors and now I’m supplementing it with public perception.</p>