Top Colleges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elite:

HYPSM + Ivies
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Caltech
Johns Hopkins
Williams
Amherst

That's it. The rest of the top 20-30 are "top schools" but I would not categorize them as elite.

Remove Northwestern from "elite."

No

Then you need to eliminate half of the Ivy League schools, Johns Hopkins, Williams, & Amherst as well.

That’s the point isn’t it. Only several are really elite. The rest are good but not that meaningfully distinguishable from number 50+ ranked college.

exactly is Amherst really much different than Vassar in terms of prestige?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elite:

HYPSM + Ivies
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Caltech
Johns Hopkins
Williams
Amherst

That's it. The rest of the top 20-30 are "top schools" but I would not categorize them as elite.

Remove Northwestern from "elite."

Then you need to eliminate half of the Ivy League schools, Johns Hopkins, Williams, & Amherst as well.

That’s the point isn’t it. Only several are really elite. The rest are good but not that meaningfully distinguishable from number 50+ ranked college.

exactly is Amherst really much different than Vassar in terms of prestige?

No

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elite:

HYPSM + Ivies
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Caltech
Johns Hopkins
Williams
Amherst

That's it. The rest of the top 20-30 are "top schools" but I would not categorize them as elite.

Exchange Harvard with Duke

Harvard is listed first (HYPSM)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a professor, when I look at grad school apps (which I receive filtered already for our GPA/score cut-offs), I would say there are roughly a group of 50 National Universities and 50 LACs that overlap but don't fully match the USNWR rankings that I treat mentally equivalent in terms of knowing the schools select strong students, the quality of education students received has prepared them well and that a high GPA from their school is meaningful. When I get an application outside those schools, I don't discount it, but I dig into other aspects of the application with greater scrutiny to get a read on academic preparation.

Likely my list of top colleges differs from that of entry-level employers as we are looking for different things.

honestly would be very interested in hearing your list.

+1 to that.

+2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elite:

HYPSM + Ivies
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Caltech
Johns Hopkins
Williams
Amherst

That's it. The rest of the top 20-30 are "top schools" but I would not categorize them as elite.

Remove Northwestern from "elite."

Nope. Remove one-trick-pony Hopkins. Northwestern is included in the group of elite schools: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/136366/

"Alumni and students of the Ivy League Universities. Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and Yale. Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Stanford, Duke, Caltech, Berkeley, Chicago and Northwestern alumni also welcome."

The two LACs definitely have some distinguishing about them, since McKinsey recruits at just them and no other LACs. https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/120/1085366.page

[Anonymous]

It slices. It dices. Its DCUM.

[Anonymous]

An objective indicator of elite status is a school's total endowment. The recently released (Feb., 2023) endowment figures show a decline from last year. The top 10 schools by total endowment are:

1) Harvard
2) Yale
3) Stanford
4) Princeton
5) MIT

6) U Penn
7) U Michigan
8) Notre Dame
9) Northwestern
10) Columbia

The next seven are:

11) WashUStL
12) Duke
13) Vanderbilt
14) Emory
15) U Virginia
16) Cornell
17) Johns Hopkins

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elite:

HYPSM + Ivies
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Caltech
Johns Hopkins
Williams
Amherst

That's it. The rest of the top 20-30 are "top schools" but I would not categorize them as elite.

Remove Northwestern from "elite."

Nope. Remove one-trick-pony Hopkins. Northwestern is included in the group of elite schools: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/136366/

"Alumni and students of the Ivy League Universities. Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and Yale. Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Stanford, Duke, Caltech, Berkeley, Chicago and Northwestern alumni also welcome."

The two LACs definitely have some distinguishing about them, since McKinsey recruits at just them and no other LACs. https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/120/1085366.page

That list means nothing. It was just made by some random guy and not representative of larger representation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:An objective indicator of elite status is a school's total endowment. The recently released (Feb., 2023) endowment figures show a decline from last year. The top 10 schools by total endowment are:

1) Harvard
2) Yale
3) Stanford
4) Princeton
5) MIT

6) U Penn
7) U Michigan
8) Notre Dame
9) Northwestern
10) Columbia

The next seven are:

11) WashUStL
12) Duke
13) Vanderbilt
14) Emory
15) U Virginia
16) Cornell
17) Johns Hopkins

So no LACs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elite:

HYPSM + Ivies
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Caltech
Johns Hopkins
Williams
Amherst

That's it. The rest of the top 20-30 are "top schools" but I would not categorize them as elite.

Remove Northwestern from "elite."

Sorry your kid was rejected today...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An objective indicator of elite status is a school's total endowment. The recently released (Feb., 2023) endowment figures show a decline from last year. The top 10 schools by total endowment are:

1) Harvard
2) Yale
3) Stanford
4) Princeton
5) MIT

6) U Penn
7) U Michigan
8) Notre Dame
9) Northwestern
10) Columbia

The next seven are:

11) WashUStL
12) Duke
13) Vanderbilt
14) Emory
15) U Virginia
16) Cornell
17) Johns Hopkins

So no LACs?

LACs do exceptionally well in the category of "endowment per student", but not nearly as well regarding overall total endowment.

Schols like Williams College & Grinnell College are quite wealthy in terms of endowment per student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elite:

HYPSM + Ivies
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Caltech
Johns Hopkins
Williams
Amherst

That's it. The rest of the top 20-30 are "top schools" but I would not categorize them as elite.

Remove Northwestern from "elite."

Sorry your kid was rejected today...

Grad who can't handle the truth? Sorry.

[Anonymous]

So many of these lists seem stuck in 1990. Since then engineering, computer science, and quality of life issues have become much more important and need to be factored into any kind of calculations. Accordingly, for undergraduate education at national universities, these should be the top twenty schools:

1. MIT
2. Princeton
3. Stanford
4. Penn
5. Duke
6. Harvard
7. Rice
8. Northwestern
9. Vanderbilt
10. Michigan
11. Columbia
12. Cornell
13. Dartmouth
14. Chicago
15. Yale
16. Notre Dame
17. UC-Berkeley
18. Brown
19. Johns Hopkins
20. Washington U. in St. Louis

[Anonymous]

Do you people ever give it a rest?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Elite:

HYPSM + Ivies
Chicago
Duke
Northwestern
Caltech
Johns Hopkins
Williams
Amherst

That's it. The rest of the top 20-30 are "top schools" but I would not categorize them as elite.

Duke doesn't belong on this list. Same with Williams and Amherst if we're being honest with ourselves.