<p>PASADENA, Calif.The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has been rated the world's number one university in the 20112012 Times Higher Education global ranking of the top 200 universities, knocking Harvard University out of the top spot for the first time in the survey's eight-year history.</p>
<p>Caltech was number two in the 20102011 ranking; Harvard and Stanford University share the second spot in the 20112012 survey, while the University of Oxford and Princeton University round out the top five.</p>
<p>"It's gratifying to be recognized for the work we do here and the impact it hasboth on our students and on the global community," says Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau. "Today's announcement reinforces Caltech's legacy of innovation, and our unwavering dedication to giving our extraordinary people the environment and resources with which to pursue their best ideas. It's also truly gratifying to see three California schoolsincluding my alma mater, Stanfordin the top ten."</p>
<p>Thanks for posting this, Menloparkmom. I don’t put much stock in the ratings, but perhaps this report will put Caltech on the rader for many applicants.</p>
<p>Tk - you took the words right out of my mouth. It would be like decreeing Juilliard the world’s top university. Oh well, now we know what is valued by this ranking’s creator – math and science uber alles. Yawn.</p>
<p>We visited Caltech this summer, assuming that it was sort of a “mini MIT,” but even more of a niche school. I had barely heard of it until my son started talking about a few years ago. We were blown away. Not only is the campus gorgeous, but the depth and breadth of the offerings is tremendous. What a wonderful place for a highly focused young scientist or mathematician or engineer. I’m happy to see that they are getting the attention they deserve. Perhaps you consider it a “yawn” PG, but our economy needs more kids like those educated at Caltech.</p>
<p>Actually, these rankings “feel” much more legitimate than USNWR for me. They may be a bit more subjective – teaching environment counts for a lot, 30%, but they are not obsessed with average class size – but their rubric makes a lot of sense. It is clearly science-loaded; research activity (measured by dollars) and licensing activity are also big factors. But, guess what?, that IS what most of the world cares most about in a university. </p>
<p>How tough it is to get in is not a factor at all, and it’s really interesting to see how much difference that makes. USNWR, if I recall correctly, has no public universities in its top 25 (or maybe one). This ranking has 9 public universities in the top 25 US universities, with two (Berkeley and UCLA) in the top 10. This list is also much less Ivy-dominated than USNWR. Yes, Harvard and Princeton, with Stanford, sit right behind Caltech at the top of the list, and Yale, Columbia, Penn, and Cornell are all solidly top-20 in the US. But there are a lot of public and private universities that show better than Brown (at about #30 for US universities) and Dartmouth (mid-40s).</p>
<p>I was a math major myself; it’s hardly as though I don’t value math. However, our economy, our society, our world needs both math / science, the arts, languages, literature.</p>
<p>Caltech is a wonderful school. No doubt about it! Nothing wrong with being specialized. I just happen to agree with tk that its focus is too niche to declare it the world’s top university.</p>
<p>It can be considered a top world university, because what they are doing there can, has, and will impact our world - perhaps to a greater degree than at many other colleges. I think many of these lists are silly and insulting, really, but Caltech does not enjoy the reputation it deserves. Other than people in science and tech, most people know little or nothing about it. Those in science and tech bemoan the fact that doesn’t get more attention. I spoke to an MIT professor the other day who said that Caltech has always been something of a “secret” among certain groups. He thinks it’s mostly because of its small size and focus on undergraduates.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is not a true university. It is, as it indeed calls itself, a “college.” It is a superb LAC–probably the very best LAC–with some very good professional schools. It is ridiculous to attempt to rank it as a university and compare it to true universities with a full complement of graduate programs.</p>
<p>Similarly, CalTech, as great as it is, is obviously not the “top” university in the world in any real sense, because it is a niche player. Calling it the “top” university in the world is basically to say that fields of academic endeavor outside of STEM areas are garbage and don’t count.</p>
<p>Which is a healthy and skeptical way to look at any rankings. Far too few people read the rankings last year and thought “no doubt Harvard is outstanding, but it (fill in name of your favorite Harvard foible) that it’s hard for me to think of it as the world’s top university.” </p>
<p>I am a huge, huge Caltech fan, but it’s not the right school for the vast majority of students. For those who belong there, it’s a gem that brags of treating undergrads like grad students and grad students like junior faculty.</p>
<p>It didn’t say it was garbage. Just that it made Tech and Science more mainstream than some of us think it should. IMO, it’s high time to bring science and technology out to front. More millionaires are being made in the field. It brought profound changes to our lives. Are we going to insist true universities are all about Homer and we just allow science for completeness’s sake?</p>
<p>Part of the fun of rankings, though, is that you want to design a rubric that basically makes sense, but at some point you have to turn it on and see what it produces. And in this case it produced results that said Caltech scored about 1% higher than Harvard and Stanford. Obviously, you take that with a grain of salt, the way you take any ranking with a grain of salt, and you certainly notice that Caltech is missing maybe a couple dozen departments in which Harvard and Stanford are world-class custodians of Western (and Eastern) Civilization. But the ranking rubric is also telling you that some really, really special stuff is going down at Caltech, and that’s valuable to know.</p>
<p>The whole notion of ranking institutions as different as Caltech, Stanford, Oxford, and, say Sciences-Po on a whole-institution basis is fundamentally frivolous. It can’t mean that much, and no single student can experience all the elements that lead this group of researchers to conclude that Caltech is “best” by 1%. But the project of ranking – and the project of interpreting rankings – forces you to think about what’s important, and how you can recognize that, and how your assumptions about the world may be provable or not.</p>
<p>And, anyway, I’m glad that there’s some credible ranking system out there that isn’t telling all of America’s smart kids that public universities are dogfood. So, thank you Thomson-Reuters and The Times of London.</p>
<p>Thank you, Consolation. That’s exactly my point of view. And in the list of “things that continue to trouble and amaze me from being on CC”, the elevation of STEM over other areas of knowledge is high on that list. </p>
<p>It’s not dissing Caltech to suggest that it’s a niche, specialized school. </p>
<p>But then again, what if there truly was no #1 school? What if there truly are just a handful of great places, each with strengths and weaknesses? </p>
<p>The in-the-box thinkers, the kind who think that there is one descending ladder of academic greatness and that 2400 scorers always bring more to the table than 2300 scorers, couldn’t even handle such a state of affairs.</p>
<p>This is a straw man argument you repeatedly bring up. I’ve seen very few people who think 2400 scorers should be favored over 2300 scorers. And I don’t see what it has to do with Caltech, since even they don’t favor 2400 over 2300 scores. Basically, they expect you to be ~750+ in most of the subsections…</p>
<p>Ha - it was just posted within the last 24 hours on another thread by a poster named toughyear. My comment was directed at posters such as toughyear who unfailingly believe that at the top ends of the curve, 2400’s still bring more to the party than 2300’s and therefore should always be favored in admissions, hands down. My comment wasn’t directed at Caltech the institution.</p>