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% (42 votes)
Oxford and Cambridge
5% (2 votes)
Total votes: 44
36 Comments
 

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.

 

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.

 
Most Helpful

I’ve been to 6 continents and over 70 countries in my lifetime and from my experience, if you travel to a rural area of any third-world non-English speaking country then the order in terms of raw name recognition is:

Non-Commonwealth Nations excluding Europe (~60% of world population):

  1. Harvard
  2. Oxford
  3. Cambridge

    Commonwealth Nations including Europe (~40% of world population):

    1. Oxford

    2. Harvard ≈ Cambridge


    Based on my life experiences, among the aggregated Global Population the order goes:

    1. Harvard ≈ Oxford

    2. Cambridge

    To be fair I haven’t met a single person who didn’t know what Harvard or Oxford were. I’ve met many people who didn’t know what Cambridge was, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and LATAM. After Harvard and Oxford there’s a steep drop off in terms of brand strength and brand recall for all other unis in the world, including Cambridge and other such as MIT or Yale.

    So if you want to maximize your social pedigree the answer is most obviously Harvard + Oxford.

 

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