Originally Posted by jimmycooper

Unless you buy in to the conspiracy kook crap, I don't think disinformation should be considered as an effective strategy because there are no benefits to doing so.

Regarding the colleges, I think that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (along with non-Ivy League Stanford) are pretty much in their own league. Same with MIT. After that I think you have to factor in specific programs.

Here are some University Of Texas national rankings.

#9 in Computer Engineering
#6 in Overall Business Undergrad
#1 in Accounting
#9 in Entrepreneurship
#6 in Finance
#6 in Management
#4 in MIS

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandre...kings/business
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandre...gs/engineering

Th undergraduate advertising program, which is what I did, is also widely regarded to be the best in the country.

http://advertising.utexas.edu/about

I'd take any of the above Texas degrees over pretty much any degree from a lesser Ivy League school like Brown. Big public schools get slammed in the overall rankings because they usually have a large # of students in less competitive liberal arts programs with poor student/teacher ratios and the fact that state imposed mandatory admissions laws generally lead to a high dropout rate. I think the short list of top tier public schools would include Texas, Michigan, Illinois, Berkeley, and UNC. I don't know what the high ranking programs are at any of them aside from Texas, but along with non-Ivy League private schools like NYU, University Of Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, and a few others, I think certain programs at each could be seen as the equivalent or better than a general liberal arts degree at Brown. Easily.