<p>With the exception of Berkeley it’s mostly regional. A similar phenomenon happens at privates with the exceptions of mostly Harvard, Yale, and Stanford if memory serves.</p>
<p>Michigan’s a ‘good school’ in California. And UCLA’s a ‘good school’ in the east coast. It’s not that surprising that it’s reputation isn’t great in Wisconsin. (whose reputation, unsurprisingly, also isn’t great in California.) I mean, how many people from there even go to UCLA? And if you want to bring in arguments about Michigan or Berkeley, the former’s much closer; and the latter’s the #1 public university.</p>
<p>I would be surprised if Berkeley was as well regarded in Wisconsin as Sally thinks. The average layperson thinks the best state school is their own flagship. As for Wisconsin, its not that the school doesn’t enroll students from all over the country as Xiggi mentions because it certainly gets a fair share of students from the NY/NJ tristate area, but that the OOSers it enrolls often graduated near the bottom of their class in the good high school and boarding academies of New York. It simply doesn’t enroll a strong student body. UCLA’s a bit better, but it wouldn’t be considered “prestigious” anywhere outside of Southern California.</p>
<p>“I would be surprised if Berkeley was as well regarded in Wisconsin as Sally thinks.”</p>
<p>goldenboy, obviously I cannot speak for all of Wisconsin. I can speak for myself and my friends that I know from our kids’ high school. Berkeley has a good reputation but parents I know are starting to become concerned about the same public-university/state-budget issues there (and at other flagships) that are affecting UW.</p>
<p>Also, you should do a little research on the admissions stats for UW vs. UCLA, UCB, etc. Your claim about the OOS students at UW is way off.</p>
<p>Yep. One of the most frustrating things about CC is how provincial people are - oh, because my favorite school in my backyard gets accolades in our backyard, people must think that same way everywhere.</p>
<p>Just shows that the definition of smart kids and the reputation of schools vary around the country. And that the perceived difficulty to be accepted is in the eye of the beholder. And an eye that is blind to the reality.</p>
<p>xiggi, I’m pretty sure the definition of “smart” kids is not that different in one part of the country versus another. But yes, to my point and Pizzagirl’s, the reputation of schools varies across the country. Which supports the idea that your “reality” is not necessarily everyone else’s. I’ve seen you criticize rankings before. What else are you going on? I am not sure what your point is except to bait an argument.</p>
<p>There’s no reliable tool (at least none that i’ve ever seen) for gauging the prestige of a university or college in a particular region within the United States. The only thing that can shed some light, probably indirectly, on reputation is rankings. But again, that can only go so far.</p>
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<p>No [insert four letter letter expletive that starts with “S” and ends with “T”]</p>
<p>Furthermore, rereading goldenboy’s original statement, i think i read differently than others did. Here’s the post again to remind:</p>
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<p>I didn’t take the statement as saying something like “across the whole nation (which i guess is implied by nationwide) you’d get these reactions” but as saying something like "across different parts of the U.S. (e.g. different regions) it elicits these reactions, which i know UCLA elicits the latter reaction in certain parts of the east coast, and certainly the former reaction in the west.</p>
<p>Perhaps it might be most accurate to say that UCLA elicits nationwide reactions from shrugs to “WOWs”</p>
<p>Sally, I am not looking for an argument. Simply saying that a school that admits 50 percent of students from a state such as Wisconsin should not generate plenty of wows. It simply means that most qualified get in, along plenty of not so competitive students. That’s what your admit rate means. Wisconsin is a good public school and it serves its market well. Just like plenty of other schools with local appeal.</p>
<p>My comments were in response to those wow comments about Duke.</p>
<p>xiggi, I do not recall anybody saying that Wisconsin has a “wow” factor on this thread. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I can only think of a handful of schools that truly inspire a “wow” response among the highly educated masses across the nation. I personally attended Michigan and Cornell. First of all, few people I come across bother asking me where I went to college (I assume it is the same for most of us), but on the rare occasion when I am asked, I do not recall either one of those schools inspiring a “wow”. The only time that happened to me was a Polish consultant at BCG who was wowed by Michigan. That was not expected as she was herself hired by BCG after completing her MBA at Kellogg. </p>
<p>In my profession, HR, both the schools I attended are well regarded (Cornell thanks to the ILR program and Michigan thanks to its HR professors, including Dave Ulrich), but again, neither has inspired a “wow”. </p>
<p>One of my best friends did his PhD at MIT (and his undergraduate studies at the American University of Cairo). Although he never boasts about his MIT education, everybody at GE (where he works) knows him as the “MIT guy”. Now that is one of the few schools that has a real “wow” response factor. Harvard obviously does too, as do Princeton, Stanford and Yale. Beyond those schools, any wow one gets from an educated adult will be situational and rare, like Caltech among Engineers or Johns Hopkins in Medicine.</p>