Where do you draw the line for “top schools” / prestigious

I’ve always been curious where people internally draw the line for prestigious schools/top schools. A lot of people just say they go to a “prestigious school” but I feel like everyone has different perceptions of that

Do you draw it at just HYPSW? Do you include all ivies, mit, Chicago, Duke?

I personally draw it at the T20 schools, schools at or just around Us news and Forbes rankings- in reality there is more like 25. (This would include schools like Vanderbilt, Williams, USC, Georgetown, UCLA). At the same time though I recognize ranking doesn’t always translate to prestige.

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Personally, when I think of prestigious schools I think of Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Uchicago, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Caltech, MIT, Rice, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Amherst, and Williams.

 

Caltech probably relatively easily. They have the intellectual rigor and quant background, only need to learn the finance/accounting side of IB. It's also recognized as a top school even outside harder sciences.

A couple Julliard students probably have a background that could fit and could pull it off after catching up on the quant & finance/accounting side, but those would be exceptions. It would also work differently from a recognition perspective - they would definitely be "interesting" candidates, but maybe not taken as seriously as others.

 

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