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Opps! Be careful there, my friend. I don’t think you know me enough to be able to say that. lol</p>
<p>What about a statement which goes: Yale is more prestigious than Dartmouth. Do you still have a problem with that?</p>
<p>RML, I’m afraid you’re confusing forced-choice situations (X is more prestigious than Y) with overall hedonic ratings (both X and Y can still be prestigious).</p>
<p>If, indeed, MIT is “more prestigious” than Harvey Mudd, so what? Harvey Mudd is still prestigious enough that it’s an excellent choice for an engineer. </p>
<p>If I get a 99 on a test, and you get a 97, I may have done better than you, but so what? We both know the material well enough for all intents and purposes. </p>
<p>This is what you aren’t getting. If you measure prestige on a scale of 1-100, you are parsing differences of 99, 97 and 95. Yes, maybe MIT is the 99 and Harvey Mudd is the 95. Yes, maybe Brown is the 97 and NU is the 95. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. They are all still prestigious, so you don’t make decisions based on that – you make decisions based on other factors – personal preference, city vs suburb, whatever. You keep saying “X is more prestigious than Y” and concluding that “therefore, Y isn’t very prestigious.”</p>
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<p>Why is it so important to you what my personal opinion of Yale and Dartmouth is?<br>
Why would it matter to a potential student deciding between the two of them?</p>
<p>Have you ever wondered why you have such a need for others to classify things as more, better, best? Why can’t all of the schools we’re talking about simply be great schools that offer different things? Why does one have to be better? What’s the point? What possible purpose does it serve to parse out prestige differences at this level, RML?</p>
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<p>Yes, Harvey Mudd and Pomona are very prestigious. But that begs the question. You’re being asked (by another poster) why Harvey Mudd and Pomona are not as prestigious as MIT and Stanford. Even people “in the know” know they’re not, including Harvey Mudd and Pomona students and alumni themselves.</p>
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<p>Actuallly, you said that “most people” aren’t that “shallow” (in their thoughts). That implies you’re saying what they think is “good or bad,” unless you believe that being “shallow” is neither good nor bad.</p>
<p>Pizza Girl, don’t give me a “so what” answer, because that’s not really an answer to my questions. You made some claims that I think are absurd, and I’m trying to refute you by gradually allowing you to realise it by yourself how wrong you were. </p>
<p>Again, according to you, Mudd is as prestigious as MIT and Pomona is as prestigious as Stanford. But that’s not true. Why? </p>
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<li>The best scholars of the land rated MIT/Stanford higher than Mudd/Pomona ¶</li>
<li>MIT/Stanford attracts the best of the best students (creme de la creme) from all corners of the globe. Pomona and Mudd don’t.</li>
<li>When one is accepted at both, say MIT vs Mudd, one is likely going to enroll in MIT. Same is likely true for a Stanford - Pomona scenario.</li>
<li>More people would say “wow” when you tell them you went to MIT/Stanford than M or P.
AND THE LIST GOES ON AND ON AND ON.</li>
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Let’s not talk about decisions yet. We’re not yet there. We’re still talking about prestige on this thread as that is what the OP was asking. To be clear, the OP wasn’t asking if prestige matters int he real world. he was simply asking which between two schools is more prestigious, using Michigan and UNC as his subjects. And, here you are telling things that the OP wasn’t concern about. So, please stick to the topic of this thread so we won’t confuse the OP, and especially, yourself.</p>
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Because I’m trying to pull you back to discussing the real issue in this debate. Don’t you get it? You are not answering the OP’s question. All we’ve heard from you, so far, are your opinions that directly concern you, not the OP’s.</p>
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<p>Meh. Sounds like the typical non-HYP ivy. What about Cal’s admit stats for community college transfers? There are more of them than OOS applicants and international students.</p>
<p>^ That’s actually a generous figure now compared to my time when I applied to Berkeley. The admit rate in my year was something like 7%.</p>
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<p>If you say so.</p>
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<p>I think I already gave my answer to this:
The fact that top students go there–as well as to Pomona and Harvey Mudd–shows that prestige is only one element that some people consider when deciding where they will get the best education.
But, hey, you want a real measure of “prestige” that might matter to some people? I think the best measure is the academic excellence of the students that choose to go there. For a rough measure, I’d look at the middle 50% of SAT scores. Here, for example, are the middle 50% of SAT Reading scores for a few schools:
Harvard–680-780
Williams–660-770
Berkeley–590-710
Pomona–710-780
Stanford–660-760.
So there you have it. By that measure, Pomona is *more *prestigious than Stanford, because it attracts better students. How about that?</p>
<p>Only if you narrowly define “prestige” by SAT scores.</p>
<p>Some schools (Pomona, WUSTL, Caltech, etc.) select for them more than others. Caltech has higher SAT scores than Harvard. Is Caltech more “prestigious” than Harvard?</p>
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<p>Beats me. I’m not in the sciences or engineering, so how would I know why HM isn’t as prestigious as MIT? What am I, the prestige police? </p>
<p>I think part of this, though, is a fundamental difference in terms of the importance of prestige points. You, being guys, always look at the bigger-is-better side of the equation. Someone’s prestige has to actually beat out someone else’s prestige. It’s a contest. I look at it a different way. Once you’ve gotten to a certain level, additional prestige points are rather meaningless. To use the hypothetical 100 point scale (if such a thing could be measured), once you get to 90 or so prestige points … the value of going from 95 to 97 is immaterial and irrelevant. So, therefore, if I’m choosing between schools that have a 91, 93, 95, and 97, they’re all in an equal band of 90-100, that criteria falls away, and I choose on other criteria. To say “Well, School X has a 97 and School Y has a 95 and therefore School X is more prestigious than School Y” is, indeed, dancing on the head of a pin at that level.</p>
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<p>But that’s a question that’s irrelevant to anything, because Caltech and Harvard offer very different experiences, and what matters is which atmosphere the student likes / prefers. Not what other people – who may not even know much of anything – think, like or prefer. Why should someone who would really groove on what Caltech offers go to Harvard just because there might be broader prestige? That would be evidence of being dumb, not being smart. </p>
<p>It’s the fundamental difference between valuing your own opinion, and valuing others’ opinions. It’s very clear that RML is all about looking around to see what other people think, and then what other people think determines what he thinks.</p>
<p>Dimsum and RML, what are you hoping to get out of selecting a school that has the Very Highest Prestige in the world? How will that materially impact your life, versus selecting a school that has similar excellence and academic quality, but isn’t as prestigious? Is it your ego? I truly don’t understand.</p>
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<p>If you didn’t know the answer, you should’ve admitted this when the question was asked, instead of doing a song and dance.</p>
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<p>Nope. I never made the value judgment that bigger (more prestige) equals better. I simply noted the fact that some schools are more prestigious than others. As you put it so eloquently: I didn’t say it was good or bad.</p>
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<p>Who said I did this? I may have, but I certainly didn’t say it.</p>
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<p>It’s relevant to this thread topic which is about “prestige.” And even if weren’t relevant, why can’t it be asked for the sake of an intellectual discussion?</p>
<p>More to the point, if “prestige” is “irrelevant to anything,” then why do YOU keep talking about it? Why not move on and leave it be?</p>
<p>Well, then what’s the point of making the observation?</p>
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<p>Sigh. Maybe MIT offers far better financial aid. Maybe Mudd has an unappealing campus. I don’t know. But the larger point is that what other people DO doesn’t define prestige, RML. Again, you go back to your crowd-following approach. “Oh, look, the crowd chooses X over Y! X must be more prestigious!” By that definition, McDonald’s, Sears and NASCAR are the most prestigious restaurants, stores and events in the country. </p>
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<p>So what? Prestige isn’t defined by the masses. You keep missing this point.<br>
Often, there is more prestige in the choice that fewer people know about / choose, because it’s a quiet kind of prestige – you choose the best and you don’t need to wear it on your sleeve. It’s the kind of prestige you know nothing about, because for you prestige is intimately related to “will everyone recognize this”?</p>
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<p>What’s the point of anything?</p>
<p>“Berkeley is anything like UNC, which is a public school. But it already has beaten some ivies in the general prestige race.”</p>
<p>Great point … 20,000 Asians can’t be wrong.</p>