Is going to Harvard + Oxford or going to Oxford + Cambridge greater?

If somebody wants to purely maximize aura, pedigree, name recognition, fame, prestige, and all-time greatness (by attending the two greatest universities of all time—which is two of Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge—meaning that one of these three universities won’t make the cut), what is the greatest university combination possible? 

Particularly between these two combinations, which wins?

Which university combination wins?

Harvard and Oxford
95% (39 votes)
Oxford and Cambridge
5% (2 votes)
Total votes: 41
36 Comments
 

Will do that but would like to maximize pedigree before beginning my career. I have plenty of time for that after my training ends. Do you think the average global person would favour the duo Oxbridge combo or the HYPSM + Oxbridge combo?

 

In the off chance you aren’t trolling, people break into top roles from schools nobody’s ever heard of. Your mindset is the bottleneck, not your pedigree. The average global person does not give a shit where you went to school after the first 5 minutes of meeting you. After that it’s your presence, character, and intelligence that matter. Stacking credentials won’t fix what’s actually missing

But to answer ur question, Harvard & Oxford.

 
Most Helpful

Harvard and Oxford is the correct pairing because it’s the only combination that spans both poles of Anglo-American power at the highest altitude. Oxford is centuries of old-world aristocratic weight, the Rhodes Scholarship, every British PM worth naming, stone halls that whisper inherited authority. Harvard is the American counterpart but with raw imperial energy, an endowment larger than the GDP of most nations, the deepest penetration into global PE, sovereign wealth, and Fortune 500 boardrooms of any institution alive. Together they say you move fluently through both hemispheres of elite capital. Oxford and Cambridge is redundant, same High Tables, same May Balls, same Pimm’s on the same lawns. It signals you really, really like England, not that you command both sides of the Atlantic. In circles where cachet actually matters, breadth across continents will always outweigh depth within one.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

 

Harvard and Oxford. Not even close.

Isn’t Oxford and Cambridge essentially the same experience? You only need to go to one of them to have Oxbridge’s prestige, so you might as well go to the more famous and prestigious Oxbridge uni internationally (Oxford), and pair it with the strongest uni brand in the world overall (Harvard).

 

I was raised in a rural part of Eastern Europe and the only two non-local universities that I knew of as a child were Harvard and Oxford. I don’t think I knew of Cambridge until I was a teenager and I only knew of it in the first place because of its affiliation with Oxford. I think it’s a similar dynamic with Harvard and Yale.

Now living in the UK I see all three as among the best unis in the world.

 

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