What Schools Do You Consider “Prestigious?”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just keeping it short and sweet aggregating from many responses:

US: HPSM, Caltech, Yale, Duke, Penn, Columbia, potentially Berkeley/UCLA
India: IITs (specifically Madras, Delhi, Bombay)
China: Tsinghua, Peking
UK: Oxford, Cambridge

Are the bolded ones a joke?

I recognise these might be prestigious in the Indian context, but outside of India does anybody know about them or care?

It’s offensive to put them on par with Ivies and oxbridge. And before someone responds back saying, the IITs are harder to get into than Harvard, that’s not my point. My point is people know and care about Harvard. Nobody outside India knows or cares about these schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever gets me/my kid a job at Apple, Goldman, Google, or McKinsey, right? Or into a top grad school.

I hope the prestige of their next step eclipses their undergraduate college, which becomes a nice footnote and network.

At my prestigious employer, I don't know where most people went to undergrad but I do know business or law schools and at least one well known former employer for nearly everyone.

FAANG are cutting back.

Makes it more prestigious

Makes it more precarious.

[Anonymous]

I’ve lived and worked in North America, Europe and Asia, and I think these are the schools that are recognised and considered prestigious globally:

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Wharton

Oxford, Cambridge, LSE

INSEAD

Honourable mentions: Columbia, Berkeley, UChicago, Caltech

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you get a pass for Wiliams and Amherst. But otherwise SLACs aren't really taken seriously

What do you think makes the education one receives at a SLAC different from an Ivy League school which I presume you think people take seriously? Like is an Econ degree at Swarthmore bs while it’s serious business at Brown?

30 or 40 years ago I might have understood what you mean. The leaders and people making hiring decisions back then that went to Harvard may not have heard of most LACs but with the major changes in college admissions since the late 80s, nearly everyone who attended an elite school is well aware of the other top schools. People at Stanford know Pomona is a great school and people at Harvard and Yale know Swarthmore and Amherst well.

30 years ago when the high school population was at a generational low it was pretty easy for a solid student to get into a LAC while ivies were more competitive and only the top of the class got in (but they could get in without a hook, just excellent grades and scores). Now in order to get into an Ivy you need all that plus hooks and same goes for top 5/10 SLACs. When you go down the SLAC list the need to have a hook declines but the basic academic credentials basically hangs in there, with more tolerance of imperfections. So there is less disparity in terms of the academic caliber of the students than there used to be.

I don't think you know actually what you are talking about TBH. It sounds pretty good though!

Well I got into HYP almost exactly 30 years ago, and know where my high school friends landed, and the background of my college classmates, and I just lived through my DD’s application cycle with all her friends, and I’ve studied all the CDS data… so actually I think I have a pretty good grip on this.

Did she end up picking your alma mater with the hook?
I like the credentialism too. Does specifically getting into HYP help your argument?
Your mention of the CDS data is good but the other anecdotal evidence is what gets people in trouble spreading info on forums.

Didn’t apply to Alma mater. I don’t know what your objection is. I personally lived through the process of applying to elite schools both 30 years ago and today. No one doubts it was much easier to get in anywhere 30 years ago. My contention that there is less differentiation among students at top schools is uncontroversial because we know there are many more highly qualified applicants now and they all have to land somewhere. If you simply looked at SAT scores, LACs 30 years ago were materially lower than HYP. Like hundreds of points, not 50 points. My unhooked high school peers got into Ivies and similar left and right. I remember one guy who wasn’t even a top student being depressed he only got into Brown. A/B students with 1300s got into Wellesley and Williams and Carleton. It was a different era. You can write anything off as anecdotal but when you have tons of firsthand knowledge of who got in and what their profile was, it’s meaningful. Now we have kids with straight As and near perfect test scores getting rejected left and right from all Ivies and top 20 schools, often landing at schools like Wesleyan or Wisconsin.

My high school AP American History class (in 1992, say about 30 kids) in a public NYC high school that was not Stuy or Bronx Science or BK Tech had FIVE Harvard admits and two of them turned it down in favor of Stanford.

That’s one class, not the whole senior class cohort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just curious what the cutoff for prestige is for people in the DMV. Just HPSM? Does it extend further?

The most prestigious school for your kid is the one where they will do the best work. That varies a lot from one student to the next. I've reviewed 1000s of applications in the tech industry. The emphasis has always been on work experience, except in those cases where the applicant was fresh out of college, in which case the emphasis is on what they actually learned and how they made the most of their time. It's often clear who relies on the name of their alma mater, and that's always a turn off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you get a pass for Wiliams and Amherst. But otherwise SLACs aren't really taken seriously

What do you think makes the education one receives at a SLAC different from an Ivy League school which I presume you think people take seriously? Like is an Econ degree at Swarthmore bs while it’s serious business at Brown?

30 or 40 years ago I might have understood what you mean. The leaders and people making hiring decisions back then that went to Harvard may not have heard of most LACs but with the major changes in college admissions since the late 80s, nearly everyone who attended an elite school is well aware of the other top schools. People at Stanford know Pomona is a great school and people at Harvard and Yale know Swarthmore and Amherst well.

30 years ago when the high school population was at a generational low it was pretty easy for a solid student to get into a LAC while ivies were more competitive and only the top of the class got in (but they could get in without a hook, just excellent grades and scores). Now in order to get into an Ivy you need all that plus hooks and same goes for top 5/10 SLACs. When you go down the SLAC list the need to have a hook declines but the basic academic credentials basically hangs in there, with more tolerance of imperfections. So there is less disparity in terms of the academic caliber of the students than there used to be.

I don't think you know actually what you are talking about TBH. It sounds pretty good though!

Well I got into HYP almost exactly 30 years ago, and know where my high school friends landed, and the background of my college classmates, and I just lived through my DD’s application cycle with all her friends, and I’ve studied all the CDS data… so actually I think I have a pretty good grip on this.

Did she end up picking your alma mater with the hook?
I like the credentialism too. Does specifically getting into HYP help your argument?
Your mention of the CDS data is good but the other anecdotal evidence is what gets people in trouble spreading info on forums.

Didn’t apply to Alma mater. I don’t know what your objection is. I personally lived through the process of applying to elite schools both 30 years ago and today. No one doubts it was much easier to get in anywhere 30 years ago. My contention that there is less differentiation among students at top schools is uncontroversial because we know there are many more highly qualified applicants now and they all have to land somewhere. If you simply looked at SAT scores, LACs 30 years ago were materially lower than HYP. Like hundreds of points, not 50 points. My unhooked high school peers got into Ivies and similar left and right. I remember one guy who wasn’t even a top student being depressed he only got into Brown. A/B students with 1300s got into Wellesley and Williams and Carleton. It was a different era. You can write anything off as anecdotal but when you have tons of firsthand knowledge of who got in and what their profile was, it’s meaningful. Now we have kids with straight As and near perfect test scores getting rejected left and right from all Ivies and top 20 schools, often landing at schools like Wesleyan or Wisconsin.

My high school AP American History class (in 1992, say about 30 kids) in a public NYC high school that was not Stuy or Bronx Science or BK Tech had FIVE Harvard admits and two of them turned it down in favor of Stanford.

That’s one class, not the whole senior class cohort.

Lol. But it’s anecdotal! I got into Y and P merely because I had straight As and a 1500. Maybe my essays and recs were good. Nowadays I would be lucky if I got into Michigan

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Chicago, Northwestern, Duke and JHU

I had to ask what JHU was. That disqualifies it to me.
Georgetown and Vandy have more prestigious name recognition than Hopkins and Chicago.

I think people know Johns Hopkins even if they do not know the acronym (JHU); most people know U Chicago although not everyone (my kid goes there so I know some people do not know how selective it is)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just keeping it short and sweet aggregating from many responses:

US: HPSM, Caltech, Yale, Duke, Penn, Columbia, potentially Berkeley/UCLA
India: IITs (specifically Madras, Delhi, Bombay)
China: Tsinghua, Peking
UK: Oxford, Cambridge

Are the bolded ones a joke?

I recognise these might be prestigious in the Indian context, but outside of India does anybody know about them or care?

It’s offensive to put them on par with Ivies and oxbridge. And before someone responds back saying, the IITs are harder to get into than Harvard, that’s not my point. My point is people know and care about Harvard. Nobody outside India knows or cares about these schools.

The bolded is a bigger joke because Sundar Picchai the CEO of Google or Alphabet is from an IIT (not listed i.e., Kharagpur).

[Anonymous]

University of Virginia

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just keeping it short and sweet aggregating from many responses:

US: HPSM, Caltech, Yale, Duke, Penn, Columbia, potentially Berkeley/UCLA
India: IITs (specifically Madras, Delhi, Bombay)
China: Tsinghua, Peking
UK: Oxford, Cambridge

Are the bolded ones a joke?

I recognise these might be prestigious in the Indian context, but outside of India does anybody know about them or care?

It’s offensive to put them on par with Ivies and oxbridge. And before someone responds back saying, the IITs are harder to get into than Harvard, that’s not my point. My point is people know and care about Harvard. Nobody outside India knows or cares about these schools.

The bolded is a bigger joke because Sundar Picchai the CEO of Google or Alphabet is from an IIT (not listed i.e., Kharagpur).

His career didn't take off until getting US grad degrees from Stanford and Wharton though. Worrying so much about undergrad alone, whether IIT, Oxford, or Princeton is getting more and more overrated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just keeping it short and sweet aggregating from many responses:

US: HPSM, Caltech, Yale, Duke, Penn, Columbia, potentially Berkeley/UCLA
India: IITs (specifically Madras, Delhi, Bombay)
China: Tsinghua, Peking
UK: Oxford, Cambridge

Are the bolded ones a joke?

I recognise these might be prestigious in the Indian context, but outside of India does anybody know about them or care?

It’s offensive to put them on par with Ivies and oxbridge. And before someone responds back saying, the IITs are harder to get into than Harvard, that’s not my point. My point is people know and care about Harvard. Nobody outside India knows or cares about these schools.

The bolded is a bigger joke because Sundar Picchai the CEO of Google or Alphabet is from an IIT (not listed i.e., Kharagpur).

His career didn't take off until getting US grad degrees from Stanford and Wharton though. Worrying so much about undergrad alone, whether IIT, Oxford, or Princeton is getting more and more overrated.

+1
In 2023 it is better to get a good undergrad education and attend a prestigious grad school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I consider below “elite”:

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

Serious question: with the changes in admission practices, why is it worth considering most of these schools “elite”? Getting in is no longer a signifier that the student was the absolute best, but more so that the student has rich/connected parents and/or that the students comes from a racial demographic that (applying socially fashionable racism) the admissions department has decided it prefers?

I will grant you that MIT and CalTech are prestigious. The rest need some reevaluation at this point. I think that, in a generation, you will see that the most successful people did not go to these schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just keeping it short and sweet aggregating from many responses:

US: HPSM, Caltech, Yale, Duke, Penn, Columbia, potentially Berkeley/UCLA
India: IITs (specifically Madras, Delhi, Bombay)
China: Tsinghua, Peking
UK: Oxford, Cambridge

Are the bolded ones a joke?

I recognise these might be prestigious in the Indian context, but outside of India does anybody know about them or care?

It’s offensive to put them on par with Ivies and oxbridge. And before someone responds back saying, the IITs are harder to get into than Harvard, that’s not my point. My point is people know and care about Harvard. Nobody outside India knows or cares about these schools.

The bolded is a bigger joke because Sundar Picchai the CEO of Google or Alphabet is from an IIT (not listed i.e., Kharagpur).

His career didn't take off until getting US grad degrees from Stanford and Wharton though. Worrying so much about undergrad alone, whether IIT, Oxford, or Princeton is getting more and more overrated.

+1
In 2023 it is better to get a good undergrad education and attend a prestigious grad school.
FWIW, IIT Kharagpur was the first IIT. PP probably just inadvertently left it off the list.

[Anonymous]

Anyone who is concerned enough about "prestige" to post something like this won't have it, no matter where they send their DC off to for college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I consider below “elite”:

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

Serious question: with the changes in admission practices, why is it worth considering most of these schools “elite”? Getting in is no longer a signifier that the student was the absolute best, but more so that the student has rich/connected parents and/or that the students comes from a racial demographic that (applying socially fashionable racism) the admissions department has decided it prefers?

I will grant you that MIT and CalTech are prestigious. The rest need some reevaluation at this point. I think that, in a generation, you will see that the most successful people did not go to these schools.

Are you serious? You honestly need a history lesson on elite college admissions if you think that is true. Having more connections and rich parents was FAR more important in the 1950s-1990s than today. These schools were not nearly as selective but still had great reputations for that entire period. In the mid 90s, Chicago had a 71% acceptance rate, Cornell over 30%, and Yale over 20%. They were higher before that too. These schools were for mostly for rich white guys from prep schools for most of their existence. That they only even considered a tiny sliver of the population didn't change that the colleges were considered elite by the general population.