One of the best teachers I ever had was a Nobel Laureate. Maybe it’s not an either/or situation?
And I have found that the elite research universities consistently send me graduates (including B.S.) that have more hands on, practical experience than the ones that stick with classes and lab that repeat famous experiments.
The halo effect has nothing to do with fast talking and flash. It has to do with what the interviewer brings into the room. It exists - I’ve benefited from it as an MIT grad, and my daughter has benefited from it as a person with an econ degree from Chicago.
I’m sure you are aware of the experiments where teachers are told that some students with no special skills are special, and give these kids higher grades. The halo effect is like that. You get it as a survivor of an elite school. And you get it before you can prove yourself.
I’ve run technology departments and hired tons of CS and Engineering PhDs myself, and very few are either fast talking or flashy. They don’t have to be.
I can understand that those schools would be great for lots of students, but I don’t think many would call them elite. I found it useful to have professors who could not only teach the basics but who were up there with the very latest of advances. And top research schools get the leaders of the field to come in to talk also.
Tier 1 - Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Chicago, Duke, Caltech.
Tier 2 - Georgetown, Northwestern, UCLA, CMU, Cornell, Columbia, UVA, Washington (STL), Johns Hopkins.
Tier 3 - Michigan, Georgia Tech, Rice, Brown, Dartmouth, USC, Boston College, and depending on the program, UT Austin, UIUC, RPI, etc.
I don’t think there is a “majority of people” here. The majority of people don’t really give a shit. I mean, if you asked “What is an example of an elite car?” lots of people would say “BMW” or “Porche”, not “Maybach” or “Bugatti”. That doesn’t mean that the Porche is more elite than the Bugatti, it just means most people don’t know shit about cars.
When you are going to college, to the degree you care about prestige at all, you care about the prestige where it’s relevant–among people who know. So if you go to Middlebury or Swarthmore, maybe the average Joe on the street isn’t going to think that’s “elite”, but that’s just because he’s not in a position to know or care. That doesn’t make them non-elite. Everyone who interacts in a sphere where going to an elite school matters knows that those schools are elite. Saying “Amherst isn’t elite because most people haven’t heard of it” is like saying “A Maybach isn’t a status symbol because most people wouldn’t recognize it in the parking lot at Walmart.”
You can’t list those two and not list Princeton. Princeton/Harvard/Yale are the Oxbridge of America. It doesn’t have to be 2:2.
It’s more that that. It’s not all abstract: one of the best things you get at elite schools are amazing internships, for example. I feel like every kid we’ve sent to MIT has had internships at places like Facebook, Google, huge trading companies. And these are insane internships–they get flown to some city, put up in company housing, paid five figures, and put in charge of real things. When comparing recent grads, the one that’s worked at a start-up in Cambridge, a Google campus, and Facebook already --and can talk about all those experiences in an informed way–just blows everyone else out of the water.
But then why ask the question here? As I said, the members of this board skew toward the knowledgeable end on this question. So if you want to know what the majority of people think, you’re not going to find it here. In any case, the question of what’s elite can only really be evaluated by those who are elite in terms of knowledge of the subject.
Beyond the top four or five schools (Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc) the majority of people have no idea what the actual elite schools are. So most schools don’t have any reputation.
I am really curious about this. My opinion has always been that it’s an awful idea for a talented student to go to a community college or lower rated state university even if it’s less expensive. You’re simply not going to be surrounded by the intellectual atmosphere when your classmates are working the overnight shift at Walmart and just commuting to campus for a couple of classses. The late night dorm bull sessions and campus activities add a lot to your university experience.
I wish like Hell I’d gone to a better school than Florida State and I should have pushed my family harder. I also wish I didn’t waste a year working in school, getting more involved in campus activities my last couple of years was life changing, far more than the restaurant and bar work I did.
The thing is that the highly-selective schools, for the most part, have really generous financial aid/scholarship programs, so the actual cost of attendance can be less than a state university or a community college. In other words, don’t make decisions based solely on the sticker price of the schools.
Berkeley
Harvard
Yale
Stanford
MIT
Too late to edit, but USC would never make my list. Surprised by how much it turned up in the cheating scandal.
All the opinions/lists given here are thoughtful and responsive to the OP. I think that peccavi seems to provide the best and most hands-on experience posted here.
For what it is worth, my contribution is limited to MIT. I talked to a hiring manager for a tech company many years ago and he related this story to me. He was collecting resumes for a fairly high-level research position. The resumes he received were excellent, well-prepared and professional. Except for one. It was a simple resume printed on thermal paper the size of a grocery receipt tape. The fact that that candidate listed degrees from MIT meant that he got one of the few interviews. I don’t remember whether he was hired, but that story always stuck with me.
This also. When I got resumes from MIT students it really made me feel dumb, because back when I went we didn’t do nearly the stuff the students today are doing.
But that’s real accomplishments, not the halo effect. You get the halo effect no matter what you really did in school.
It is true my list does not narrow things down much. But the focus of most people is on American schools. This is fine, it is what “elite” means to them. But, to take MBAs as an example, would miss out on schools like LSE or INSEAD.
Having spent many years in professional programs at good universities, I tend to think the actual difference in education (but not campus experiences) is pretty small. I think many schools are actually very good. Malcolm Gladwell makes this point well in his book on David and Goliath; that some elite students should aim lower. The fact my criteria designate many schools is intentional. You may disagree, but I am also free to define what elite means to me.
Many countries have a university or small group of schools that are very competitive, preferred by the local wealthy and powerful, and whose graduates form a disproportionate share of government officials, top military positions, stockbrokers and investment bankers, connected businessmen, etc.
This applies to China, Korea, Japan, India, England, France and dozens of other countries. Canada is a little more diffuse - McGill, Toronto, Queens, Western, UBC and some others are very good, but similar.
One definition of an elite school might be a university or college that powerful people in a country that lacks an excellent school send their children to.
But as I said, Gladwell makes great points about “being a big fish in a small pond” that shows the benefits of being a great student at a good school rather than an elite student with average marks at an elite school due to elite competition, who might get discouraged and not even finish.
It doesn’t have to be but it is. In terms of history, lore, social cachet, and just plain famousness, Harvard- Yale is a one-two punch that exists as a duo on its own. The people who run this country are known generally as a group for their associations with Harvard and Yale as the twin poles of the elite. It’s not Harvard-Yale-Princeton. It just isn’t.
Because I specifically asked for a knee jerk snap judgement on what pops up in your head when you think “elite school.” Did I think that some would want to show off their specific knowledge and give an analysis of what schools are really elite? Of course I did. If people didn’t ignore the OP and fight against the question I would have to double check to see if I was on the right website.
On point:
I tend to mostly agree with this list, although I’d (personally) put Yale and Princeton in place of UC Berkeley.
By the Groucho Marx definition, Berkeley can’t be that elite. They accepted me. Harvard and MIT were wiser.
Below those, there are many many schools that are also very good. But I am impressed when someone went to Harvard or MIT in a way that I am not impressed when they went to Cornell or Brown, even though the others are certainly really excellent schools.
Also, happy to see my alma mater Harvey Mudd make Dr_Paprika’s list, even as maybe!
I’d say that Princeton has it’s own reputation of elitism and scholarship just without the image of Yale and Harvard as producing national leaders, almost as if it cares more about education than that, maybe intellectual snobbiness of some kind. It’s just an image though, as it is for the other schools. I’ve met plenty of idiots from all the schools that have been mentioned. Go up to Cambridge any day of the week and you can’t swing a cat without hitting one.
From my own impressions, acknowledging that some of these are probably more elite than others, and in no particular order: