How important is university reputation? And what does it even tell us?

Everyone wants to go to a good university, but it’s impossible to agree on a single definition of ‘good’ for everyone. In fact, any two people will have different preferences and priorities.
However, the idea of ‘good’ does seem to get attached to certain globally famous universities – the Ivy League in the US, Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, the Sorbonne, etc. Given that ‘good’ is such a difficult idea, maybe we should use the word ‘reputation’ instead. More...