Rankings don’t really matter; prestige does, and prestige is basically a proxy for wealth. Because of that, it feels tacky to identify with it outright, which is why people react so negatively when the subject comes up, especially when it’s reduced to rankings.
Wanting the best of something is just human nature. If you’re pursuing a terminal degree in medicine, it makes sense to want to attend the best schools available. Nobody is actually choosing Podunk U over Harvard out of pure indifference to prestige. The reality is that if top schools were open to everyone, they would stop being prestigious by definition. Exclusivity is what sustains their social power.
After watching these forums quietly for the better part of a decade, what stands out to me is that chasing prestige often feels like chasing the idea of being a billionaire: aspirational, but mostly empty. The admissions process is not only opaque but also, even under ideal fairness, stacked against nearly everyone. The odds are vanishingly small before you even factor in legacy admissions and the way holistic review quietly rewards wealth. So for 99% of applicants, it’s effectively a lost cause.
I think a lot of the anti-prestige rhetoric you see is just a reaction formation... wanting more status and opportunity isn’t “objectively bad.” The tricky part is that prestige isn’t evenly distributed: there are the truly elite schools, the ones orbiting them, and then layers beyond that. But the farther you move down that ladder, the less the “prestige” label actually matters, because resources are so heavily concentrated at the top.
In the end, the genuinely elite schools don’t need rankings. They’ve already set themselves apart, and everyone knows exactly who they are.
