https://blog.prepscholar.com/is-stanford-ivy-league-duke-mit is a 2021 blog on the ive-equivalents

Ivy League is one of many brandometers, but it only includes about a third of the top 25 American universities.

— Public perceptions: 3 tiers among the 8 ivies

In terms of prestige, “my” top tier U.S. colleges are Harvard^Princeton^Stanford^MIT. Presige is a single metric that each layman assigns to each college. As such, it is incomplete, prejudiced, unscientific, inconsistent, and not based on any critical evaluation of positive/negative evidence. The subjective evaluation of prestige is often refuted by powerful facts, but a layperson often brushes it aside without giving any justification.

One intriguing factor: Generally the ives with large graduate/professional schools [2] are more recognized in rankings and appear more in publications and more “prestigiou”, according to one writer.

The same writer went on to say that generally Harvard, Yale, Princeton are regarded above others, closely followed by Columbia, then UPenn and Brown, then Dartmouth and Cornell.

[2] HarvardBizSchool, HarvardMedSchgool, HarvardLawSchool

https://blog.prepscholar.com/ivy-league-rankings says Harvard, Princeton and Yale (the Big Three) are comparable to Stanford and MIT [1]. Columbia, UPenn and Brown are comparable to Duke and Caltech (UChicago too). Dartmouth and Cornell are comparable to Northwestern and Vanderbilt.

U.S.News, THE, QS rankings are volatile/unstable, not a reliable reflection of the 3 tiers.

Note NobelLaureateCount is low for Duke(2), Brown(2), UPenn(4)

— [1] UChicago and Yale have comparable rankings. So do Columbia and UCBerkeley. The other colleges on par with the big3:

• Stanford
• MIT

These 2 engineering schools (+Caltech) are without peers globally. Among them, Caltech is the least known to the lay public despite top-notch professional reputation..

— CalTech paradox

1. very high Nobel Laureate count since it is strong in physics, chemistry (perhaps medicine)
2. .. Rockfeller University is similar
3. small student and faculty population .. lower than all other 60+ AAU members
4. comp science .. ranked outside top 8 nationally. CompSci is by far the most prominent domain of all domains .. fewer IT entrepreneurs.
5. no business school, No Exec MBA program .. fewer big company founders or CEOs
6. no medical school or law school (no U.S. presidents) .. prominent domain
7. Overall, few notable people in business, politics or media.