College Prestige Rankings

Title as seen. Names within each tier are in no particular order. Rankings take into account prestige of the entire university, not just a particular program or area of study. Comment below if you agree/disagree and if you think a school is missing!


Upper Top

HYPSM

No explanation needed - crème de la crème

Middle Top

UChicago, Columbia, Caltech, Johns Hopkins, UPenn, Duke, Brown, Northwestern

Top tier schools that are a notch below the above in terms of historical prestige and selectivity

Lower Top

Dartmouth, Cornell, WashU, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Rice, CMU, Berkeley

Schools that make it into the "elite category" but are seen as the lowest in a sea of greats


Upper Mid

UCLA, USC, NYU, Michigan, UVA, Emory, Tufts, Texas, Boston College, UF, UNC, GTech, etc.

Great schools that have been historically denied entry into the elite category, consisting primarily of great private schools and top state schools

Middle Mid

UW Madison, UIUC, UGA, Wake Forest, UC Santa Barbara/Irvine/San Diego, W&M, Purdue, Villanova, etc.

Dominated by flagship state schools known for above average programs

Lower Mid

Penn State, Rutgers, Ohio State, Maryland, Texas A&M, SMU, BYU, CU Boulder, Pepperdine, etc.

Good to okay schools - generally well-known but not very prestigious


Upper Low

Alabama, FSU, Kentucky, Delaware, IU, Baylor, Michigan State, ASU, Arizona, Oregon, Utah, UCF, etc.

Well-known schools that are not very prestigious and are frequent subjects of mockery and snobbery.

Middle Low

SUNY Oneonta, Alabama-Birmingham, UT Dallas, FIU, Adelphi, Roger Williams, Central Michigan, etc.

Satellite campuses of flagships and random schools nobody has heard of

Lower Low

Community College

 

Literally what is this point of a post like this? They are a dime a dozen, have basically no relevance to the discussions of this forum and just bait useless debate.

Maybe spend time learning how to align logos instead of doing this, intern.

 

UCLA, Emory, USC, and Michigan have been in T20 multiple times. UCLA was 20 last year, when my brother went to Emory it was 18 and was consistently T20, USC was 19 on WSJ, and Michigan has been T20 many times

 

I don't actively track this shit. I was on the Applying to College subreddit back in high school so I know more about this then I should.

 

Maybe one of the gayest posts in WSO history... try spending less time on the internet my friend

 

This ranking is for only US universities as you may have noticed. But for what it's worth, although it has a top finance program and heavy wall street presence, 99.9% of Americans have never heard of Western. I would say it goes in either Middle Mid or Lower Mid.

 

This is an overall prestige ranking not a ranking based on IB placement. This is why the reputation of the entire school is considered instead of an individual school or department (Stern, Ross, etc). NYU and UMich is accurately rated - both great schools with strong reputations. Yet prestige wise they are not on the same level as some of the lower tier Ivies and T20s. 

 

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