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.

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