Stanford, MIT, CMU, UIUC, UC Berkely UCLA, USC, and UC San Diego all make the list, but those are to some extent peculiar to my experiences in California. The

Stanford, MIT, CMU, UIUC, UC Berkely UCLA, USC, and UC San Diego all make the list, but those are to some extent peculiar to my experiences in California. The last few are probably a different grab bag depending where in the country you want to end up. I can't speak properly to how things are done abroad, but my understanding from other fields is that name recognition matters even more.