UK MNers: Which American universities and colleges can you name?

[esperance]

DH, who is an American, and I have had a long-running disagreementconversation about the "name-recognition" of American universities and colleges.
Leaving aside the astronomical cost of American higher education and whether or not "name-recognition" is important, I am curious if any Mners can name off-the-top of their heads, ie, without consulting Professor Google, which are the top American universities? Also American colleges, known there as Liberal Arts Colleges.
So, any MNer with a moment to spare...please share your knowlege!

Harvard
Print on
Ucla
Penn state
Slippery rock university
University of Evansville
Texas state
Yale
Columbia

Columbia
Harvard
MIT
Harvard
Penn State
Univ of Penn
Temple
Arizona State
Wellesley
Brown
Princeton
NYU
UCLA
UCSD
UCB
Yale

Harvard
Yale
Brown
UCLA
Stanford

And that's it. Having looked up after I wrote these down, I recognised a few other people had said, like NYU and Columbia.

Yale
Harvard
Princeton
Brown
and, erm, Skidmore.

Oh, I recognise quite a few of the others, like Stanford, MIT and Penn.

OK, without reading the rest of the thread, here goes:
Yale
Harvard
Princeton
Brown
UCLA
Berkeley (is that different from UCLA, not sure)
MIT
Columbia
NYU
University of Illinois (because a pal went there)
Penn State
Vassar
Cornell
erm....
Juilliard - does that count?
Nope. Stuck now.

oh VASSAR, thanks midnight, I knew there was another women's one I knew! (I think The Group was Vassar)

& Berkeley is different from UCLA, it's San Francisco I think

good list, well done!

Without reading anyone else's posts (and confessing that I have some experience in VA, so you should probably discount George Mason, William and Mary and a couple of others)...

Brown
Yale
Duke
Harvard
Berkeley
Rutgers
UPenn
UVA
Virginia Tech
William and Mary
Smith
Bryn Mawr
Georgetown
Howard
George Mason

Surely the test is whether we could rank a list HE provided in terms of best/middling/worst? Can he give us a list of 15 or so and we tell him whether we'd employ someone from them?

Is Bryn Mawr women's as well, Mandyville?

Yep. There's the Ivy League (not all of which I got) and the equivalent Seven Sisters of womens' colleges (only two of which I can remember - bah!).

Without looking at anybody else's list, here are the names I know. I have NO idea if they are colleges / universities / grad schools. But here goes:
Harvard
Yale
Brown
Columbia
Stamford
Princeton
Vassar
MIT
Northwestern
Duke
Notre Dame
Wharton
Wellesley

Had to look it up - sorry OP!!! Barnard, Mt Holyoak, Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Radcliffe and Bryn Mawr are the Seven Sisters.

Without looking at other replies
Harvard
Yale
Carnegie Mellon
Is there Massachusetts Institute of Technology? That rings a bell.

oooh, wellesley is women's too, isn't it!

along with

Vassar
Bryn Mawr
& mith

& I'm sure there's one more important one...

oh, you beat me, Mandy!
Radcliffe was the other one I'd heard of (I didn't know there were 7)

Yale, Harvard and Princeton were the only ones I could think of off the top of my head. Reading others' posts, I've heard of MIT and Brown as good unis. Heard of UCLA, but have no idea if it's Ivy League or not.

Thanks so much for your responses MNers. You are a knowledge bunch. (DH was impressed!) For anybody who is interested: the top-ranked Liberal Arts Colleges are Williams College, Amherst, Swarthmore and Middlebury. They are considered by many to be on a par with Harvard, Yale etc., except they don't have post-graduate students.
Again I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my query.

or even a knowledgeable bunch

I had heard of Amherst & Swarthmore, but had no idea what sort of places they are

Only reading the op I can name:
Harvard
Yale
Stanford
Princeton
Brown
Mit
Johns hopkins
Gw
Penn state
Nyu
Columbia
Duke
Sarah lawrence
Wellesley
Dartmouth
Northwestern
Ucla
Rutgers
Chicago
Ive heard of the 7 sisters but cant remember all off the top of my head

Without reading the thread first- Harvard, Yale, cal-tech, MIT, brown, Ohio state. Also know there are other something- state universities.

Haven't read the thread to avoid cheating!

Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Brown, Columbia, um...

In Ten Things I Hate About You, she wants to go to Sarah Lawrence, I think?

Not cheating by reading through

Ones that immediately come to mind as top rank:

• MIT, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, Stamford

Other schools that come to mind (rather at random)

• Northwestern, Brown, Cornell, Texas State, Virginia Tech, Chicago, NYSU, SFSU, UMich, Rutgers, Virginia State

Fascinated to hear about the Liberal Arts colleges. I've actually visited Amherst, when I was young, and I came away thinking it was a secondary school

Berkeley is UC Berkeley (i.e. University of California Berkeley) and UCLA is University of California Los Angeles. They're all part of University of California.

Someone needs to work out from this which the most recognised schools are.