Doesn’t only apply to ivy leagues. I have a coworker than attended cc for 3 years and then transferred to a super elite/expensive private school in Oregon for his final year.

Ok, I didn’t think there were any elite schools on the West Cost apart from Stanford and after googling “most prestigious colleges Oregon” the only one I’ve heard of before is Reed, which USNWR ranks #68 among National Liberal Arts Colleges. This isn’t a knock on the students or the quality of education in Oregon or on the West Coast generally, just a statement of social reality. If you go by Lauren Rivera’s research on hiring practices of elite professional service firms the super elite are HYPS, with the remaining members of the Ivy League, Northwestern, MIT, Cal Tech and some others sometimes being included depending on who was hiring. No one’s transferring to any of those schools after three years at a community college. I doubt that’s ever happened at Reed.

Reed is among the top tier of liberal arts colleges.

Liberal arts college rankings aren't comparable to large university rankings. There are thousands of them, and many have specialized niches.

You need to adjust your scale when looking at colleges versus universities, and even then USNWR rankings are a crude metric if you are interested in a specific program.

Also, the idea that "elite professional service firms" and Ivy/Ivy-tier Universities have similar selection criteria doesn't seem at all surprising to me. But I don't think that's a model that's appropriate or useful for most HN readers.

Reed is #2 in the country for the number of graduates who go on to earn PhDs.

It's a more prestigious school than their USNWR ranking would indicate. Reed refuses to fill out the USNWR yearly survey, and is ranked lower because of it.

And Steve Jobs went there, but he dropped out.

It would be better to norm "getting a PhD" by undergrad department. Ivy league stem graduates often go straight to work because their salaries are basically as high as a phd

Anyone getting a PhD to increase their salary is probably making a big mistake.

Cal Tech must be #1, yes? Thanks for explaining the disjunction between their reputation and rank.

BTW, this is anecdotal and happened a long time ago, but I attended a "national liberal arts college" that's ranked _above_ Reed and had at least one classmate that completed two years at a local community college then transferred to this school for the final two years.

For that matter, my local community college system offers _guaranteed admission_ to several respected (and selective) universities. I.e., not only _can_ you do two years at community college and transfer to one of these more prestigious universities for a four-year degree, you can enroll in programs that guarantee it. (And several schools apparently found this useful enough to actively create a pipeline for it.)

There are other very good but smaller schools on the west coast like Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Reed etc.