So when it comes down to the “prestige” of top British colleges, does America and the rest of the world view these schools the same way the Ivies, and other top 20-30 American schools are viewed when it comes to prestige? I am talking about schools such as the University of Edinburgh, Liverpool, Bristol, UCL, Kings, ICL, and other top ranking U.K. schools. I keep hearing that many British colleges, such as the ones listed above, are not regarded as highly as the Ivy League or other top American universities in Britain, or the rest of Europe and the world. Yet, QS, US News & World Reports, and Times Higher Ed all rate these schools very highly in terms of rankings. If not sometimes better than the Ivy League. Is this true? Could anyone provide me with more info? How do these top British schools compare to the Ivies, top 2”s, and other schools like Purdue or Ohio state in terms of international recognition?
This is a strange question. Is this about trying to impress someone? I notice you have conspicuously omitted Oxbridge here, which one could argue are the two most prestigious universities in the world.
The average person anywhere, whether in Arkansas or Andorra has perhaps only heard of a very few universities. Maybe Oxford, maybe Harvard?
Yes, there are some excellent UK universities and people in other places have heard of them. But why does it matter? If you want to attend Bristol, go for it. If you want to go to Purdue, same. Is UCL better than the Ohio State? Probably? But who cares?
People who need to know, know that a degree from ICL is a good degree. If your goal is to leave the US and work abroad, I would argue that your ICL degree is likely to be viewed more positively than your degree from U Conn, for example. I suspect that your degree from Karolinska Institute will be more highly regarded than your degree from Wash U STL. But again, I’m not sure why this is important.
In “neutral” areas of the world (outside the US or Europe) those unis you listed would be seen to be on par with our top publics, ranging from UCLA down to Purdue/IU. Every place in the world obviously has a home familiarity bias.
Many folks who are outside the UK or not in academia are not familiar with UCL or KCL or Edinburgh but of course they do rank very highly on the research oriented global rankings like the QS and THE. They are outstanding universities. Relative to the Ivy universities, Oxbridge are both in the top ten, Imperial and UCL in the top 20, and Edinburgh and KCL in the top 50. LSE is world class in social sciences, but its focus and size limits its global research ranking. If you want to compare these leading British schools to the Ivies, you would probably conclude that in terms of overall academic excellence and reputation HYP compares with Oxbridge and are better than the others. Columbia, Cornell and Penn are comparable to Imperial and UCL. Dartmouth and Brown have smaller research footprint, and would rank below the leading British universities.
I think you can have a look online yourself because there are many establishments that spend a lot of time and money to conduct annual surveys of those that matter (like CEOs, HR Managers and academics) about how the perceive the reputations/prestige of universities around the world, including the US.
I cannot put links as the number of such surveys are alot, and CC would block my post for moderation.
So I will list some of them:
Global University Employability Ranking: Which surveys organisations that recruit graduates internationally.
QS World University Rankings Indicator (Academics Reputation): Which surveys academic experts regarding teaching and research quality at the world’s universities.
QS World University Rankings Indicator (Employer Reputation): Which surveys employers about where they source the most competent, innovative, effective graduates.
RUR Reputation Rankings: Which surveys academics globally in regards to the brand strengths of universities based on their teaching and research reputations.
CEOWORLD Magazine's Best Global Universities Ranking: Which surveys globally the quality of education, perceived global influence, recruiters feedback, employers feedback, job placement rates and academic reputation of universities.
The surveys give you similar outcomes year after year, so it is hard for anyone to argue against them.
By no means can anyone say any of these surveys are faultless or produces an accurate picture. But in their defence, they are actually real surveys that gets real important people’s opinions, so you will hardly find better sources for giving you the answers you desire.
You will see that Oxbridge normally fall in the HYPSM level, while LSE, Imperial, UCL, KCL and Edinburgh normally fall around majority of the other Ivies and equivalent levels.
Bristol will fall a bit further down, while Liverpool will fall even further (I personally don’t rate it as part of the Top 20 UK universities).
So the answer to your question is:
Yes, the Top UK universities are as highly regarded as the Ivy League universities worldwide.
BTW, @LutherVan, your contention that the top UK unis (outside of Oxbridge, LSE, and maybe Imperial) are “equivalent to Ivies” isn’t born out by the rankings you listed. In 4 of the 5 rankings, the only times any UK uni outside those 4 outrank any Ivy besides the 2 undergraduate-focused Ivies (Dartmouth and Brown which never do well in international rankings because they are small and don’t do much research or have large grad programs so are closer to LACs and St. A’s than to the research-focused research U’s) are UCL 2 times and KCL and Edinburgh one time each. You’ll find that the top American publics show better than that.
Your argument is as nonsensical as saying that some mediocre UK uni is better than the top American LACs because they’d rank higher on these types of international rankings.
Anyway, I’m not going to bother replying to you because it’s clear you don’t have much real world experience and only rely on rankings from online.
How come despite what these are showng, you refuse to accept the Top UK unis (below Oxbridge, LSE, and maybe Imperial) are equivalent to the Ivies and equivalents?
In the aggregate of these tables, it shows UCL is well equivalent to Columbia, Cornell & UPenn. It also shows Edinburgh, LSE and KCL are above Brown & Dartmouth.
In all the tables, only Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin and GIT are the US public universities anywhere in the range of Top non-Oxbridge UK universities in all or even just 4 of the 5 tables.
How come you choose to ignore all these facts and pick another view?
Don’t you think this just shows a mental selectivity of facts focusing on what you want to believe?
I think this shows you are indeed very mentally selective of what you want to believe; because it is UCL that is outranking the Ivies, not LSE.
You really do pick only information that fits the narrative your have dug your heels in and dogmatically keep to it, no matter how many clear facts is presented to you.
The real world experience you lack is that irrespective of whatever reason/excuse you have for Dartmouth, Brown or LACs not performing well in international rankings, the question asked by the OP is “how higly regarded are certain top universities worldwide?”. Not “which universities have a reputational challenge in global rankings”.
If someone is asking for “how higly regarded are certain top universities worldwide?”, do you think the best answer is:
Lets use actual surveys of up to 94,000 people worldwide (i.e. many people that matter) to figure this out?
Lets use what @PurpleTitan on CC solely thinks; he is the “Expert”?
Which one would you think is really nonsensical?
Your narrative is more important than facts and data that is directly answering the question and that is free-ly available?
So, again, you are egregiously wrong @PurpleTitan. Around the world, the Top UK universities are as highly regarded as the Ivy League universities worldwide.
Facts are facts, and there for you to find and get the right insights. You are free to refuse to accept the facts though.
Maybe I’m also “mentally selective” but as someone who actually went to college in the UK, I wouldn’t rank KCL near the ivies, or even Edinburgh. They are fine colleges, but generally not perceived at that level. LSE as someone already mentioned punches below its weight in the rankings but for what it offers I’d put it right up there after Oxbridge; certainly I know people who’ve turned down Oxbridge places for LSE.
Tl;dr - I pretty much agree with @PurpleTitan’s assessment. You are totally free to disagree and use whatever rankings work for you to prove whatever point you’re trying to prove, of course.
That said, it is not representive of how the world perceive this. Therefore your contribution is obviously full of anecdotal logical fallacy.
Worldwide surveys of leading recruiters, employers and academics in the real world regarding prestige/reputation have been conducted, are conducted annually and the outcome was/has been generally:
So what you said “They are fine colleges, but generally not perceived at that level”, is as wrong as @PurpleTitan’s. Your views are not representative of the real world/general views despite stating that it is. When you start stating “I know people who’ve …”, I quickly clicked that this is someone that thinks giving anecdotes is proof/evidence of public opinion.
In terms of hiring, I do not think that which school in this level of “prestige” a person comes from matters. If I see a candidate from UCL and a candidate from Michigan or MIT or McGill or Melbourne I will consider all of these schools to be excellent and not care about any possible difference. I have noticed that a lot of very smart people are more likely to attend the top ranked university that happens to be reasonably close to where they grew up.
In terms of working with coworkers, in most cases I do not know where they came from. Over lunch I might find out that one person has a degree from UNH and another person has a degree from Stanford but no one cares. We care about what they can do. At one point I was working with quite a few people from the UK and I would occasionally over a beer find where one of them did their bachelor’s degree. In most cases it was yet another UK university that I had sort of vaguely heard of.
In terms of getting a date on a Saturday night, my recollections are 30 years old. However, my recollections are that having degrees from two famous universities does not help.
As such I do not know what the point is.
I do agree that very good small schools such as American LACs tend to be overlooked in these rankings. However, you can get a very good education at many of them.
You’re convincing yourself it’s “factual”, but it’s not. You seemingly haven’t been around long enough to see how a change in methodology can sometimes dramatically affect a school’s place in a ranking; so according to you it would somehow be a “fact” that a school could get dramatically better or worse from one year to the next, despite it or its peers not doing much different, just because the rankings company decides to changes weightings of the factors it uses.
In the “real world”, a number of us here actually have quite some years’ experience interviewing people. Your college is at best a foot in the door at entry level or close to entry level interviews. It’s not a guarantee of anything. Maybe you come from somewhere that no one really knows these colleges and interviewers sit with a rankings list to try to decide who to shortlist, but as @dadtwo says, in the countries familiar with those universities, people don’t.
Anyway, clearly you have “someone” to convince that X college is ranked as highly as Y college, sure go ahead and use your average table rankings for that. One day you’ll go out in the real world after college, and maybe remember this conversation.
As I stated in my first post “By no means can anyone say any of these surveys are faultless or produces an accurate picture”.
That said, I don’t think any fluctuation in methodology in recent years will displace the tier outcomes I have put forward.
So the onus is on you to prove that any of the Top UK or Ivy League universities dramatically gets better or worse from one year to the next when the tables are aggregated.
I will accept “dramatically gets better or worse” if the university somehow jumps 2 tiers when the 5 tables are aggregated.
So since you have “been around long enough to see how a change in methodology”, please do kindly show us how, for example, Yale could have fallen to the Edinburgh tier or worse, or how Brown could have risen to the Cornell tier or better, based on this fluctuations in methodology.
The ball is in your court.
Thanks again for your anecdote to represent the “real world”.
I am assuming you are saying that the 94,000+ recruiters, employers and academics surveyed by these publications don’t have “quite some years’ experience interviewing people”?
Or they are not in the “real world”?
It is you and @PurpleTitan that have the approvable years of experience interviewing people. And yours is superior to theirs?
If you did read the request of the OP, you will find that he requested for a worldwide view, not your parochial perspective.
I think it is always more efficient in the “real world” (if you ever get in one) to answer the questions asked, not respond with what you want to say and refuse facts. That is just my personal opinion despite apparently not “having been around long enough” in comparison to your Taylor Swift-generation self.
Thank you.
How is that Trap music [noise] you kids listen to nowadays by the way?
Do you need a Safe Space?
When I finally grow up and beat my Benjamin Button’s disease, I don’t want to be like you. I just like to stick with facts, not anecdotes.