What Schools Do You Consider “Prestigious?”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can accept every list being proposed on this thread with the exception of those that include Cornell

Cornell CS, Engineering, Business(Dyson) are very prestigious.
Hotel Management NO

all very good programs, and Cornell is a great school - but agree not the tippy top kids. Think T15 in US News is cutoff in my circle for prestige

WashU and Rice are better than Cornell?

yes

We’re talking prestige here. Rice is hardly a household name. Same with Washington U. Sorry.

Agree that WashU is a little mystifying. But Rice is very prestigious. However those kids tend not to go into investment banking or consulting, which are the most prestige driven industries. But for engineering or medical school and most other fields, there really aren't many schools that are better. Bur Rice is pretty small. It's in Texas. And they're not well represented in finance, so it flies below the radar in the popular imagination.

Also, agree with the poster that noted that most of the kids at the top 10 schools - with the exception of MIT - are legacies or rich or URMs or athletes. The real talent is going to t10-30 schools. And the public honors programs. Eventually, public perception will catch up. Harvard will always be Harvard. Stanford will always be Stanford. But I think eventually people will realize that the kids at Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan are the genuine smart ones.

If I were hiring, I'd be very suspect of a recent Harvard or Yale degree. They're useful because of connections, but I know I'm not getting the best and brightest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can accept every list being proposed on this thread with the exception of those that include Cornell

Cornell CS, Engineering, Business(Dyson) are very prestigious.
Hotel Management NO

all very good programs, and Cornell is a great school - but agree not the tippy top kids. Think T15 in US News is cutoff in my circle for prestige

WashU and Rice are better than Cornell?

yes

We’re talking prestige here. Rice is hardly a household name. Same with Washington U. Sorry.

Agree that WashU is a little mystifying. But Rice is very prestigious. However those kids tend not to go into investment banking or consulting, which are the most prestige driven industries. But for engineering or medical school and most other fields, there really aren't many schools that are better. Bur Rice is pretty small. It's in Texas. And they're not well represented in finance, so it flies below the radar in the popular imagination.

Also, agree with the poster that noted that most of the kids at the top 10 schools - with the exception of MIT - are legacies or rich or URMs or athletes. The real talent is going to t10-30 schools. And the public honors programs. Eventually, public perception will catch up. Harvard will always be Harvard. Stanford will always be Stanford. But I think eventually people will realize that the kids at Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan are the genuine smart ones.

If I were hiring, I'd be very suspect of a recent Harvard or Yale degree. They're useful because of connections, but I know I'm not getting the best and brightest.

one of the best insights i’ve seen on DCUM recently - spot on fella

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can accept every list being proposed on this thread with the exception of those that include Cornell

Cornell CS, Engineering, Business(Dyson) are very prestigious.
Hotel Management NO

all very good programs, and Cornell is a great school - but agree not the tippy top kids. Think T15 in US News is cutoff in my circle for prestige

WashU and Rice are better than Cornell?

yes

We’re talking prestige here. Rice is hardly a household name. Same with Washington U. Sorry.

Agree that WashU is a little mystifying. But Rice is very prestigious. However those kids tend not to go into investment banking or consulting, which are the most prestige driven industries. But for engineering or medical school and most other fields, there really aren't many schools that are better. Bur Rice is pretty small. It's in Texas. And they're not well represented in finance, so it flies below the radar in the popular imagination.

Also, agree with the poster that noted that most of the kids at the top 10 schools - with the exception of MIT - are legacies or rich or URMs or athletes. The real talent is going to t10-30 schools. And the public honors programs. Eventually, public perception will catch up. Harvard will always be Harvard. Stanford will always be Stanford. But I think eventually people will realize that the kids at Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan are the genuine smart ones.

If I were hiring, I'd be very suspect of a recent Harvard or Yale degree. They're useful because of connections, but I know I'm not getting the best and brightest.

No... just no. You think Notre Dame isn't full of legacies and donor admits? It's always been one of the least diverse top colleges. The smartest kids are still at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and Princeton. Sure there are some legacy and donor admits, but the regular kids who get in tend to be the best overall. After that, the next best kids tend to enroll at UPenn (especially Wharton), Duke, Yale, and Columbia (this might change with their scandal). Berkeley also sticks out as attracting some of the best talent in the country and also internationally. I will agree Rice gets incredibly strong students, but they're limited by enrolling ~40% of their class from Texas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MIT
Stanford
Harvard
Princeton
Cal Tech
Penn, but only Wharton
Vanderbilt
Rice
Duke
Williams
Juiliard
West Point
Naval Academy

Other schools have great programs, but for overall "prestige" in the US, I think that's it.

Vanderbilt, but not Yale? Lol. No

Yale hasn't been a meaningful university in 30 years. Vanderbilt and Rice have it going on these days. Times change

Yale is still Yale cmon ladies - Rory Gilmore didn’t go to Wesleyan or Williams, she went to Yale! but I have to agree with Vandy / Rice comment, they both have it going on these days. My DCs immediate and extended friend group (which is humungous) in the region all luv these 2 schools. Even the ones aiming for HYPMS consider these 2 schools “fun and cool”, which are two words never attributed to Cornell or JHU. Times change - both had a 70% acceptance rate not too long ago, and too much of DCUMs collective memory is firmly rooted in the past. Other than the extreme lefties, who Vandy and Rice don’t want anyway!

Expect Rice and Vandy to drop in the rankings this year, especially Rice.

Why?

The ranking changes are significant and Rice benefits from its current iteration. The people saying Eice is better than Cornell will have a change of heart when the new rankings come out in a month.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A comprehensive list based upon wide consensus would probably include the following colleges and universities:

Amherst, Barnard, Bates, Bowdoin, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Cal (Berkeley), Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Carleton, Chicago, Colby, Colgate, Columbia, Cornell, Claremont McKenna, Curtis (Institute of Music), Dartmouth, Davidson, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Grinnell, Hamilton, Haverford, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Howard, Johns Hopkins, Juilliard, Kenyon, Michigan, Middlebury, MIT, Mount Holyoke, Northwestern, Notre Dame, NYU, Oberlin, Olin, Penn, Pomona, Princeton, Reed, Rice, RISD, Scripps, Spelman, Stanford, St. John's College (Annapolis & Santa Fe), Smith, Swarthmore, UCLA, UNC, USC, UT Austin, UVA, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Washington & Lee, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Williams, Wisconsin (Madison), WUSTL, Yale and the U.S. academies (West Point et al).

So approximately 70 schools out of 653 national university and liberal arts colleges combined according to U.S. News and World Report which in turn is approximately 2.5% of all 4-year U.S. colleges and universities and 1.6% of all U.S. colleges and universities.

This is a good starting point. The real gems can then be found by taking out legacy, first gen, athletic recruits, ED1 and ED2 admits with full pays, z list, back door entries, side door entries, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can accept every list being proposed on this thread with the exception of those that include Cornell

Cornell CS, Engineering, Business(Dyson) are very prestigious.
Hotel Management NO

all very good programs, and Cornell is a great school - but agree not the tippy top kids. Think T15 in US News is cutoff in my circle for prestige

WashU and Rice are better than Cornell?

yes

We’re talking prestige here. Rice is hardly a household name. Same with Washington U. Sorry.

Agree that WashU is a little mystifying. But Rice is very prestigious. However those kids tend not to go into investment banking or consulting, which are the most prestige driven industries. But for engineering or medical school and most other fields, there really aren't many schools that are better. Bur Rice is pretty small. It's in Texas. And they're not well represented in finance, so it flies below the radar in the popular imagination.

Also, agree with the poster that noted that most of the kids at the top 10 schools - with the exception of MIT - are legacies or rich or URMs or athletes. The real talent is going to t10-30 schools. And the public honors programs. Eventually, public perception will catch up. Harvard will always be Harvard. Stanford will always be Stanford. But I think eventually people will realize that the kids at Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan are the genuine smart ones.

If I were hiring, I'd be very suspect of a recent Harvard or Yale degree. They're useful because of connections, but I know I'm not getting the best and brightest.

I think that’s unfair. I agree with including a much larger group of schools in the category that is graduating the best and the brightest. To say Harvard undergrads aren’t also that, though, is just wrong. There are some oddball exceptions but “legacy” kids are almost universally very good. I’m not saying it’s fair. It’s just a school with so much competition that it’s next to impossible to get into— legacies are coming from a very talented pool. And there are plenty of non-legacies with unusual backgrounds who obviously had a really good hook or wrote really compelling essays.

I was a grad student there, not an undergrad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just being real, not state schools. Not even IC Berkeley. Of course HYPMS, but also the “lower” Ivies and also the odd private school like Northwestern and Emory and probably a few more if I really thought about it.

Emory?

Lemme guess, PP, where you or your kids went/go to school . . .

Yes Emory pp, and no my DC didn't go there.

[Anonymous]

Rice only has high stats because it's smaller than some high-schools, and it only really excels at engineering. Not business, or humanities, or medicine.

[Anonymous]

Top 25 privates. +UCLA and Berkeley.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rice only has high stats because it's smaller than some high-schools, and it only really excels at engineering. Not business, or humanities, or medicine.

Not even at engineering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MIT
Stanford
Harvard
Princeton
Cal Tech
Penn, but only Wharton
Vanderbilt
Rice
Duke
Williams
Juiliard
West Point
Naval Academy

Other schools have great programs, but for overall "prestige" in the US, I think that's it.

Vanderbilt, but not Yale? Lol. No

Yale hasn't been a meaningful university in 30 years. Vanderbilt and Rice have it going on these days. Times change

Yale is still Yale cmon ladies - Rory Gilmore didn’t go to Wesleyan or Williams, she went to Yale! but I have to agree with Vandy / Rice comment, they both have it going on these days. My DCs immediate and extended friend group (which is humungous) in the region all luv these 2 schools. Even the ones aiming for HYPMS consider these 2 schools “fun and cool”, which are two words never attributed to Cornell or JHU. Times change - both had a 70% acceptance rate not too long ago, and too much of DCUMs collective memory is firmly rooted in the past. Other than the extreme lefties, who Vandy and Rice don’t want anyway!

Expect Rice and Vandy to drop in the rankings this year, especially Rice.

Why?

The ranking changes are significant and Rice benefits from its current iteration. The people saying Eice is better than Cornell will have a change of heart when the new rankings come out in a month.

But why? What about the changes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can accept every list being proposed on this thread with the exception of those that include Cornell

Cornell CS, Engineering, Business(Dyson) are very prestigious.
Hotel Management NO

all very good programs, and Cornell is a great school - but agree not the tippy top kids. Think T15 in US News is cutoff in my circle for prestige

WashU and Rice are better than Cornell?

yes

We’re talking prestige here. Rice is hardly a household name. Same with Washington U. Sorry.

Agree that WashU is a little mystifying. But Rice is very prestigious. However those kids tend not to go into investment banking or consulting, which are the most prestige driven industries. But for engineering or medical school and most other fields, there really aren't many schools that are better. Bur Rice is pretty small. It's in Texas. And they're not well represented in finance, so it flies below the radar in the popular imagination.

Also, agree with the poster that noted that most of the kids at the top 10 schools - with the exception of MIT - are legacies or rich or URMs or athletes. The real talent is going to t10-30 schools. And the public honors programs. Eventually, public perception will catch up. Harvard will always be Harvard. Stanford will always be Stanford. But I think eventually people will realize that the kids at Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan are the genuine smart ones.

If I were hiring, I'd be very suspect of a recent Harvard or Yale degree. They're useful because of connections, but I know I'm not getting the best and brightest.

I think that’s unfair. I agree with including a much larger group of schools in the category that is graduating the best and the brightest. To say Harvard undergrads aren’t also that, though, is just wrong. There are some oddball exceptions but “legacy” kids are almost universally very good. I’m not saying it’s fair. It’s just a school with so much competition that it’s next to impossible to get into— legacies are coming from a very talented pool. And there are plenty of non-legacies with unusual backgrounds who obviously had a really good hook or wrote really compelling essays.

I was a grad student there, not an undergrad.

Legacies are not coming from very good pool. Most of them are good enough (legacies, athletes, donors and VIP children, faculty and staff children etc. making up about 40-50%) with URMs making up about additional 23%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Hopkins
Annapolis
West Point
MIT
Stanford

These are the institutions most important to the United States.

+1 well thought out. Each has its purpose.

+2.

[Anonymous]

Harvard
Stanford
MIT
Yale
Princeton
Caltech
Columbia
Penn
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Dartmouth
Brown
Cornell
Johns Hopkins

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can accept every list being proposed on this thread with the exception of those that include Cornell

Cornell CS, Engineering, Business(Dyson) are very prestigious.
Hotel Management NO

all very good programs, and Cornell is a great school - but agree not the tippy top kids. Think T15 in US News is cutoff in my circle for prestige

WashU and Rice are better than Cornell?

yes

We’re talking prestige here. Rice is hardly a household name. Same with Washington U. Sorry.

Agree that WashU is a little mystifying. But Rice is very prestigious. However those kids tend not to go into investment banking or consulting, which are the most prestige driven industries. But for engineering or medical school and most other fields, there really aren't many schools that are better. Bur Rice is pretty small. It's in Texas. And they're not well represented in finance, so it flies below the radar in the popular imagination.

Also, agree with the poster that noted that most of the kids at the top 10 schools - with the exception of MIT - are legacies or rich or URMs or athletes. The real talent is going to t10-30 schools. And the public honors programs. Eventually, public perception will catch up. Harvard will always be Harvard. Stanford will always be Stanford. But I think eventually people will realize that the kids at Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan are the genuine smart ones.

If I were hiring, I'd be very suspect of a recent Harvard or Yale degree. They're useful because of connections, but I know I'm not getting the best and brightest.

No... just no. You think Notre Dame isn't full of legacies and donor admits? It's always been one of the least diverse top colleges. The smartest kids are still at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and Princeton. Sure there are some legacy and donor admits, but the regular kids who get in tend to be the best overall. After that, the next best kids tend to enroll at UPenn (especially Wharton), Duke, Yale, and Columbia (this might change with their scandal). Berkeley also sticks out as attracting some of the best talent in the country and also internationally. I will agree Rice gets incredibly strong students, but they're limited by enrolling ~40% of their class from Texas.

Nobody puts Duke on equal footing with Wharton, Yale and Columbia. Get real