At other times, it was the new car, the biggest contract, the most prestigious address.
Parents glow with extra fervor when their child studies hard, practices hard, wins first place, gets into a prestigious college.
The Metropolitan University was the most prestigious institution of higher learning but also the highest administrative organization of education in China.
The Pulitzers are considered to be the most prestigious prizes in American journalism.
New York University, which has become known for its global aspirations as much as its enviable home in Greenwich Village, named the head of one of the world's most prestigious universities as its 16th president on Wednesday.
She held her first solo concert in 1999 and cooperated with the China Central Nationalities Orchestra, China's most prestigious traditional music orchestra.
The billionaire said he was turned down by the prestigious Harvard 10 times after applying, in reply Charlie Rose quipped "they're sorry now".
The book's prestigious accolades, such as the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, may make parents think twice about reading the book for themselves - as well as to find out if the themes are damaging to children or not.
With around 40,000 students, the Politecnico di Milano is the largest and most prestigious technical university in Italy, offering undergraduate, graduate and other advanced courses in engineering, architecture and design.
" Even at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of the world's most prestigious universities, the management school has been able to fill only nine of its 30 chaired professorships.
Courses are offered by prestigious universities such as Peking and Tsinghua, and private consultancies.
Real Madrid attacker Cristiano Ronaldo has won the 2014 FIFA Ballon d'Or ahead of Bayern Munich goalkeeper Manuel Neuer and Barcelona forward Lionel Messi, scooping up the prestigious individual award for the third time in his career.
Rejected by the prestigious art school Ecole des Beaux-Arts three times, Rodin worked as a decorative bricklayer for nearly two decades, from the late 1850s to late 1870s.
The sentiment is echoed in the spartan basement that is Tsinghua University's x-lab, where angel investors rub shoulders with students and alumni from across the university, arguably China's most prestigious.
The coordinators of the table said it showed the gulf between a small number of eliteUKuniversities and less prestigious institutions.
In 2007 (when she was just 27) she received the prestigious Samuel Beckett award for writing and directing her play, The Terrific Electric in 2007 at the Barbican.
There were plenty of decent colleges in and around Dallas that Vanessa could have chosen, but she made up her mind back in middle school that she wanted to attend the University of Texas at Austin, the most prestigious public university in the state.
Lead researcher Tetyana Pudrovska said: "These women have more education, higher incomes, more prestigious occupations, and higher levels of job satisfaction and autonomy than women without job authority.
Writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, who is on the jury for France's prestigious Goncourt literature prize, told France Inter radio that Pellerin's lack of knowledge was "shameful".
But it is possible to imagine a time when a pan-Asian journal, for example, becomes equally, or more, prestigious and imposes its own "Globish" grammatical standards on writers – its editors changing "the patient feels" to "the patient feel".
