like I posted above, I'm open minded to new data. I may be incorrect, but everything I see outside of this board reinforces my perception that USC is over-valued on Allbuffs.
here's a different take, based on social media engagement
not sure I agree, but regardless, brand recognition != brand value (but I suspect there's a correlation)
here's the first source I found in google on college brand recognition. it is based on global recognition, so if we're only interested in US this may not be as relevant. I'm struggling to find a recognition ranking based on only US.
1.
Harvard University*
2.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology*
3.
Stanford University
4.
University of Cambridge
5.
University of Oxford
6.
University of California, Berkeley*
7.
Princeton University*
8.
Yale University9.
University of California, Los Angeles* (tie)
9.
University of Chicago* (tie)
11.
California Institute of Technology*
12.
Columbia University*
13.
The University of Tokyo
14.
Tsinghua University
15.
University of Michigan*
16.
University of Pennsylvania*
17.
Peking University
18.
Cornell University (tie)
18.
UCL (tie)
20.
Imperial College London
21
. Johns Hopkins University*
22.
ETH Zurich—Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (tie)
22.
University of Toronto* (tie)
24.
National University of Singapore
25.
London School of Economics and Political Science
. 
