If the bachelors degree is the new high school diploma?

[cookderosa]

Yep. Stanford and MIT are always included. Sometimes, Duke, University of Chicago, and Northwestern are thrown in there. Some people have expanded lists that include Johns Hopkins and several other private schools.

Suffice it to say that you're talking about top 50ish schools - maybe less, maybe even top 25. These are schools "everyone" can recognize. But honestly, once you get down the list, can anyone tell the difference between a school that is number 856 and the one that is 1,234?

(I'm using hyperbole, colleges aren't ALL ranked that way, but US News and World Report keeps a catalog of about 1,800 of them - though they only rank the top 300. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges)