Finally, British enterprise decided that the two old schools are the top of the world academic institutions.
Apple, orange, or pear, which one you think is the agreed number one fruit in this world? Could anyone tell them is time to group a certain institutions into groups. We are not watching horses racing every year. Still congra to the top 10 schools.
How did UCLA get in there ahead of Duke, Cornell, Northwestern, U Mich, Carnegie Mellon
Not a knock on UCLA, but yes, rankings only mean so much. And how this impacts choice of UNDERGRAD schools is hard to understand. Research counts twice as much as teaching in this ranking.
“Teaching quality counts for 30 per cent, Research counts for 30 per cent, Research Influence counts for 30 per cent,”
I have a senior at a different top 20 ranked school, and the research is clearly great but the teaching has been inconsistent, sometimes terrible. I assume the bad teachers are top researchers.
The THE ranking has always been goofy, and it doesn’t help that this British ranking always boosts UK schools. You are much better off with the Shanghai ranking, which so far has been fairly neutral on Chinese universities, and the results are much more reasonable (and the methodology is also much more transparent).
@Penn95 Maybe they do, but people quote this THE ranking frequently in discussions around undergrad schools (most of the posts here are questions about undergrad). Yes there are other better rankings, maybe the WSJ is one of them, have not seen that one. But THE is useful for graduate school applicants, not really undergrad unless your focus is clearly to do research and ultimately go the PhD route (hard for an 18 year old in HS to know that).
@blevine i think grad school rankings do have some bearing on undergraduate quality because they show who string a school is in certain departments etc. A strong research university attracts very strong professors, many of whom are teaching undergrads as well. Also the quality of research opportunities available to undergrads is directly correlated with how strong a university is.
But I do agree there are many more things to take into consideration when thinking about undergrad, which are not captured in these university rankings.
Agree with @Penn95 . Touring schools, I dismissed the ‘research opportunities’ discussions assuming that undergraduates are most often a grunt in a lab filled with grad, PHD and Post Docs. Currently witnessing a child thrive working for a professor and his team on a DOE project, communicating with scientists around the world, benefiting from a mentor outside of her major helping her gain depth and a more rounded curriculum. I was wrong to be skeptical…
Professors at top universities have the ability to do incredible research and teach at any level. Some love undergraduate teaching and inspire our children. Right now she considers being a professor a wonderful balanced lifestyle as compared to industry; not sure about the the politics of academia though.
There are a handful of kids who benefit from research opportunities, just like there are a handful that play varsity sports. Everyone must pick the school that best fits their unique needs. If you just want a generic degree and generic experience, many colleges will do and the search can be simpler (biggest scholarship, location etc). Schools MARKET sports, research ops and more, but most do not take advantage of such things.
vs.
ALL students must sit in a class (hopefully the profs think teaching is important,
and TAs are motivated).
MOST students live in the dorms, hopefully they are clean, comfortable and affordable.
ALL students need to register for classes, hopefully they can get the classes they want and need to graduate on time.
Generic rankings should reflect what is of interest/need to the majority of students, not the fringe.
Graduate school, research would be necessary for most (except professional degrees) but for undergrad it is the exception to the rule.
One of my kids goes to a tech school where they have many industry pros without a research background teaching real world skills (in addition to PhD researchers, depends on the subject/class). Great for certain majors. But most schools insist on PhD for all teaching, yet don’t reward quality teaching. Remember, for an undergrad, most of the experience is classroom learning, labs and tests, the rest is icing on the cake that some take advantage of. Research quality should be a factor in rankings, but not the dominant factor for undergrad rankings.
Actually, 75% of the students in the College of Arts and Sciences at Penn participate in hands-on, independent research. It’s not really a fringe opportunity, or just something that a handful of students take advantage of at great colleges; it’s just part of the experience of being at a world class research university.
Of these top 10 world universities, Swiss Zurich institute and PENN shared the 10th title. If not counting the Bristish side of univ. , Swiss Zurich (ETH) by far the most dynamic and fast forward institute in the Western European region. One time I learned that some ETh exchanged students at MIT mentioned their differences between us and European institute of technology. They kind of noticed that their campus life is one major difference. But the US ones are much harder to get in. PENN also have exchange programs with ETH. One time ETH group won one of the prizes at PENNAPP. They came all the way from Swiss to penn campus to compete for these computing hacking skills and scored big time. What a great experience for these European students. When there is no admission games involve, and when mainly look into all these 10 research frontier powerhouses, PENN should comfortably accept this honor and shared it with the most prestigious European institute of technology. It’s research caliber says it all.
@blevine “Schools MARKET sports, research ops and more, but most do not take advantage of such things.”
That is probably true at most schools, but it isn’t true at Penn. Penn is a very hands on school, and also a school where the vast majority of students are very engaged. Any student who goes to Penn and only attends their classes has missed a huge portion of the value. A lot of students are involved in research, clubs, projects, varsity sports, club sports, greek life, speakers, shows, etc. The opportunities for students are truly limited only by the number of hours in the day.
