<p>In England it’s not as hard as in somewhere like Germany or Malaysia, but people’s knowledge of schools is still frustratingly thin. They’ve heard of the Ivy League and so you can always tell them “its the same quality as the Ivy League” and be done with it. It gets annoying that they think somewhere like Williams is very bad but think Yale is fantastic, when a degree from either is worth a lot.
I think a lot of the problem comes from the size of the UK. Its a much smaller country than the US (obviously), so we’re used to thinking of there only being a few really good colleges. There are perhaps 15 top colleges in the UK (a very rough estimate and it really depends on your subject), so people assume without really thinking about it that there are about the same number in the USA as well. Most British kids could name about 10 top US colleges, so they automatically assume one they’ve not heard of is bad, just as they would consider a UK uni they’d not heard of to be bad because the ones whose names they’ve heard of are the good ones.
The best way to explain it is with comparisons - like its Ivy League level, its just below, its like going to University of Leeds, University of Exeter and so forth.
Good luck to all you internationals, its a tough process but remember that we are unique and interesting!</p>