Tier?

Everyone has different definitions of top tier and bottom tier, and it will matter what you're recruiting for. Depending on context, Top Tier can mean the following: H/S, H/S/W, M7, Top 10, Top 15

At its broadest term, Top Tier will mean "UCLA or better." But, someone interviewing for PE/HF probably only considers M7 to be top tier.

The top schools are frequently put in the following tiers:

A+++ Harvard/Stanford A++ Wharton A+ Booth/Kellogg/MIT/Columbia (Some people consider Booth on Wharton level, some people put Columbia a notch lower. The term Top 5 is thrown around sometimes- its the M7 schools minus Columbia). A Tuck/Stern/Haas A- Duke/Ross/Cornell/Yale/UVA A-- UCLA

After that, there's "top 20" schools like Emory, Kelley, Foster, Carnegie Mellon, etc. These are school that don't really have top tier IB or consulting recruiting, but do have high starting salaries in specific areas(e.g. oil and gas in texas, Corp 500 in pacific northwest) and very high employment rates (Emory's employment rate and internship rate is highest of any school).

There are certainly exceptions, but in general people are indifferent within tiers (usually will focus on career goals and culture), but heavily favor a higher tier. Major exceptions: 1) If people want to work in tech/west coast/entertainment, the might go down a tier to go to west coast school 2) Tuck frequently competes with the tier above it 3) Yale gets a lot of people from the tier above it, due to its high undergrad rankings.