COLLEGE PRESTIGE TIER LIST - 2024
Just wanted to make an accurate overall undergraduate prestige tier list (not finance specific) to help my fellow monkeys out in case you're in a situation in which you need to quickly assess prestige.
1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. MIT
4. Princeton
5. Yale
6. Caltech
7. UPenn
8. Columbia
9. Duke
10. Northwestern
11. UChicago
12. Dartmouth
13. Johns Hopkins
14. Brown
15. Rice
16. Vanderbilt
17. Williams
18. Amherst
19. Berkeley
20. Cornell
no georgetown sfs? lol trash list
Just flat out inaccurate. Nothing more to say
Found the Cornell grad
Cornell has done pretty well on rankings in the last few years. Don’t think anyone gives a shit about your made up ranking vs those.
del
congrats on williams!
tbh, its hard to deduce op comes from Williams
Prestige means different things to different people.
Your list is ass if you’re talking about employer perception and it’s even more ass if you’re talking about laymen’s perception. It’s roughly accurate if you’re talking about a select group of people that follow college rankings, specifically USNews.
The non-Ivy Ivy+ schools that aren’t Stanford and MIT have been the sweethearts of USNews for decades now but schools like Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Vanderbilt just don’t have the same quality of alumni network, employer reception, and general cachet as larger, recognizable schools like the top state schools Berkeley, UCLA, UMich and larger leaning private schools like Cornell, Georgetown, NYU. This is reflected in their global rankings but for national rankings, you can just blast more marketing brochures to decrease you acceptance rate and “game” the system.
Money being equal, you’d never take one of the schools I listed over any Ivy even though their rankings are about the same. You think Northwestern is only two spots below Columbia? You’re on crack.
I would definitely take Northwestern over Cornell and Brown (and Dartmouth if I was interested in anything outside of finance/gov) - saying this as a Penn grad
Northwestern kids putting in the hrs on WSO on a Saturday night is crazy. Though think it’s just one kid on multiple accounts.
The school placing 44% of the class of 2023 in Illinois is all I need to know. Chicago is a fucking dump.
Someone got rejected from Northwestern lmao
Yeah, we've already got that 2024 Best National Universities | US News Rankings
Stanford at 1. Move duke up to 5. Cornell up to 12.
Northwestern over UChicago is ridiculous
Uchicago games the rankings with multiple ed rounds + ea to inflate themselves. They also get mistaken for a public school by the average person.
All fair points but UChicago is far better represented on the street
UChic is academically far more well respected than Northwestern… the quality of their Econ program, Nobel prize winning grads, impact of the institution… doesn’t matter if your cashier at Walgreens doesn’t know what school you go to.
Stanford
Princeton
Yale
MIT
Duke
del
Second this, don’t know a single person outside of CA or TX who would take UCB or Rice over Cornell
More reasonable list, only national universities (each tier has no order):
1. H/MIT/Stanford
2. Y/P
3. Penn
4. Duke/Uchicago/Columbia(I would place above Penn 2 years ago)
4.5 Caltech (higher for STEM, lower for Finance/Pre-Law)
5. Dartmouth/Brown/Cornell
6. JHU/Northwestern
7. WashU/Rice/Vanderbilt
8. UCLA/UCB
Penn is not above the tier below it. If anything, Columbia is. Best school for Journalism, incredible for the pre-med kids, pre-law/gov is fantastic too (look at their alums, RBG, both Roosevelts, Obama, Hamilton, etc), and more. When I think Penn I think of a major business/nursing skew more than well-rounded prestige. Don’t let the idiotic protests that are now over hold too much weight, every school on your list had issues.
mainly ranking scandal, 3+2, cash cow master programs that made Columbia below Penn nowadays, plus penn has Wharton.
Putting WashU in T7 (or on this entire list, frankly) is just an insult to the other schools on there. Quite simply put, it does not belong in the discussion. Same goes for UCLA. Fun school, great girls, seems like it’d be a good experience, but not “elite” or “prestigious” by any means.
Fair enough list.
To me prestige is about where do people choose to attend when they have a choice. If they would usually choose X over Y (adjusted for scholarships), then X is more prestigious.
The only one that looks a bit suspect to me is Vandy. I have a hard time believing people are consistently choosing Vandy over the four schools below it.
Not terrible, but Caltech isn’t really a well-rounded university and is only prestigious for STEM, I’d take Columbia over UPenn, Brown over Johns Hopkins, and Cornell over Berkeley. Also LACs don’t really belong on this list
If you think you are peaking during your college years you are so wrong lmao
Life should be an upward trajectory.
I don’t see IU Kelley IB workshop anywhere…
arent like 20 people from the ibw unplaced rn
No TAMU?
Lowkey put UMass Amherst up there
Bump
What about SMU Cox School of Business
.
In debitis fugiat enim laborum. Est voluptas magnam distinctio repellat. Beatae quaerat voluptatem laudantium et.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Vel iure voluptas quaerat pariatur officia quo est. Quod ex consequuntur veniam repudiandae velit. Et rerum cumque et occaecati rerum aliquam.
Eaque sit consectetur reiciendis nesciunt officiis fuga. Architecto dolore nesciunt ullam suscipit dolorum ipsam. Sed sint sint eius molestias enim repellat officiis animi. Quia aut repellendus voluptas et. Assumenda aut accusantium illo accusamus sit expedita. Porro rerum deleniti corporis eos odio asperiores et.
Rerum voluptates autem culpa repellendus in praesentium est eos. Non aliquam nesciunt asperiores omnis. Temporibus fugit repellendus itaque ab perferendis.