Prestigious Colleges

I grew up in New England, traditional home of the prestigious colleges (though Leland Stanford really put the cat among the pigeons, didn't he?) so I have always regarded myself as having an intuitive understanding of the question.

Yet my knowledge is now fifty years old.  My sons went to Christian colleges and few of their friends went to secular schools except NH state university system ones.

But lets have a go at it.  I will check college choice websites that identify selective colleges when I am near the end, to clean things up.  I'm not worried about personally getting a high score of naming the right ones, but comparing what has happened over the years.

First there are the Ivies: Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, UPenn, Princeton, and Cornell.

Then there are the Little Ivies: Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Bates, and Colby in Maine, Middlebury.  I think Tufts and Trinity are usually included.  I think there are more, but I also think they are not always included.

The Seven Sisters: Wellesley, Radcliffe (now fully part of Harvard), Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Vassar (though it went co-ed just after my year) and...give me a moment...Barnard.

The science schools, MIT, Caltech...well, it gets complicated fast, because a lot of good schools have good departments in a lot of topics. The big midwestern Universities like Michigan and Wisconsin, for example. Stanford is likely better than the Ivies in the sciences, but it is not specifically a science school. Harvey Mudd is science-heavy, I recall, but lots of the California schools are elite in science: Cal poly, Berkeley, UCLA, I don't know if Renselaer still has its previous cache. Does Georgia Tech make the cut? I am getting mixed in what I am measuring: selectivity, prestige, quality of educatio....and it's about to get worse.

Then we get into Ivy Wannabees, like where I went. Bucknell, William and Mary. Oh wait, are Colgate and Hamilton actually little Ivies? Not sure. Johns Hopkins? Carleton? Still top shelf?  Have Duke and Vanderbilt held on, moved up? Chapel Hill...UVA select program...and still, plenty of large universities with top research and education - but those don't often carry the prestige names, because people can go to those schools with lower credentials and get out and be no great shakes. I suppose that's true anywhere, though. Rice...I don't really know, I just have this vague idea.