<p>I can totally relate to your problem. Have you made a decision, yet? BTW, where are you from?</p>
<p>Wait a sec, Oxford gives you any finaid at all? I didn't know they give you any aid at all? Btw, you got into Merton and you're still debating? Dude, it's the best college in Oxford. You'd be crazy to turn that down!!!</p>
<p>My friend is deciding between Merton, Caltech, Cornell and Berkeley. He wants to do Pure Physics.</p>
<p>@inshallah:
Personally, I think that Oxford and Caltech are both better than Cornell and Berkeley. Deciding between Oxford and Caltech depends on your personal preferences. I think they are pretty different colleges (Caltech is very small and heavily geeky).</p>
<p>He's still waiting on whether he will get EU status at Oxford. That will probably determine the end result.</p>
<p>Well, is he living in the EU or not? I mean, shouldn't it be clear whether he'll get EU status or not?</p>
<p>He's not living in the EU currently but his dad is on a temporary work contract that forces him to live outside the EU. By using some loopholes and technicalities it is possible for him to get EU status and has been done by many people from my school in the past.</p>
<p>It would suck to have to pay int. fees. What is it right now? Like close to 20k pounds?</p>
<p>About 17K for Cambridge, should be similar for Oxford. </p>
<p>If he manages EU status at Oxford, he should take it (Merton, yes? Not a place that could be turned down lightly, even for somewhere of Caltech's calibre); if not, go for Caltech. It'll work out easier in the long run, because interning over the summer in the US is less painful (I've heard).</p>
<p>
[quote]
@inshallah:
Personally, I think that Oxford and Caltech are both better than Cornell and Berkeley. Deciding between Oxford and Caltech depends on your personal preferences. I think they are pretty different colleges (Caltech is very small and heavily geeky).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>For pure physics: CalTech>Berkeley>Oxford>Cornell. Or Oxford may be on the other side of Cornell. In terms of faculty resources, Berkeley is thought to be above all, but the students at CalTech are AMAZING.</p>
<p>albert87: I could be wrong, but from my experience in China, I've always gotten the feeling that the general public saw the three most famous colleges in the world as Harvard/Oxford/Cambridge. When I told people that I was applying early to Princeton, some of them were like... ooohhh, is that good? But when one mentions Oxbridge, pretty much everyone has heard of it. Princeton is better though :D</p>
<p>The Top World Universities According to Shanghai Jiaotong University, for what it's worth.</p>
<p>1 Harvard Univ Americas 1 USA 1 100 100 100 100 100 72.4 100
2 Univ Cambridge Europe 1 UK 1 99.8 93.4 53.3 56.6 70.9 66.9 73.6
3 Stanford Univ Americas 2 USA 2 41.1 72.2 88.5 70.9 72.3 65 73.4
4 Univ California - Berkeley Americas 3 USA 3 71.8 76 69.4 73.9 72.2 52.7 72.8
5 Massachusetts Inst Tech (MIT) Americas 4 USA 4 74 80.6 66.7 65.8 64.3 53 70.1
6 California Inst Tech Americas 5 USA 5 59.2 68.6 59.8 65.8 52.5 100 67.1
7 Columbia Univ Americas 6 USA 6 79.4 60.6 56.1 54.2 69.5 45.4 62.3
8 Princeton Univ Americas 7 USA 7 63.4 76.8 60.9 48.7 48.5 59.1 60.9
9 Univ Chicago Americas 8 USA 8 75.6 81.9 50.3 44.7 56.4 42.2 60.1
10 Univ Oxford Europe 2 UK 2 64.3 59.1 48.4 55.6 68.4 53.2 59.7</p>
<p>lol... interesting how much rankings tell you about the country who did the ranking, haha. #1-6 are all engineering/science powerhouses. Yale didn't even make the Top10 simply because it's merely decent at sciences.</p>
<p>There's another ranking by the THES; I think results are pretty similar, let me look it up:</p>
<p>2006 Rankings ↓ 2005 Rankings ↓ 2004 Rankings ↓ University ↓ Country ↓ Average Score ↓
1 1 1 Harvard University US 100.0
2 3 6 University of Cambridge UK 96.8
3 4 5 University of Oxford UK 92.7
4= 2 3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology US 89.2
4= 7 8 Yale University US 89.2
6 5 7 Stanford University US 85.4
7 8 4 California Institute of Technology US 83.8
8 6 2 University of California, Berkeley US 80.4
9 13 14 Imperial College London UK 78.6
10 9 9 Princeton University US 74.2</p>
<p>
[quote]
The Top World Universities According to Shanghai Jiaotong University, for what it's worth.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am planning to start my own rankings, so you can quote that too(:))</p>
<p>As we would say in england the man on the Clapham Omnibus would probably list Oxford Cambridge and Harvard as the three 'best' universities in the world. Similarly the man on the new york subway would probably list Harvard, Yale and Princeton. </p>
<p>For those interested: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus</a></p>
<p>[slightly off-topic, but just a thought re the relative prestige and 'ranking' of universities]</p>
<p>LL: I don't know whether it's harder to get into Harvard or to Cambridge, but I believe Cambridge has a more certain method of admitting people with well-actualized intelligence of a very high level. If that makes any sense....</p>
<p>Oh, yer I totally agree. This thread kinda went around this topic a while ago, and it was a <em>bit</em> touchy with some people. My general feeling (having been through both processes) is that cambridge is much easier to get into if youre a proven strong academic, have a passion for your subject and are clearly intelligent and reasonably interesting to chat to. The admissions system at princeton seems much more of a 'lottery' (as much as I hate the phrase). I guess in many ways Cambridge is easier to get into, that is if you should get into cam, you probably will. With the emergence of aptitude tests, that are much more discriminative that SATs, and the intensity of interviews, few people seem to 'fall through the net' when it comes to Oxbridge admissions. This is shown in some ways by my school's predictions on the sucess of applicants, this year they were around 95% correct. With Princeton (or any top US uni) on the other hand, I've seen some outstanding academics rejected in favour of some (in the school's opinion) lesser, academically, qualified candidates.</p>
<p>"I guess in many ways Cambridge is easier to get into, that is if you should get into cam, you probably will. With the emergence of aptitude tests, that are much more discriminative that SATs, and the intensity of interviews, few people seem to 'fall through the net' when it comes to Oxbridge admissions. This is shown in some ways by my school's predictions on the sucess of applicants, this year they were around 95% correct. With Princeton (or any top US uni) on the other hand, I've seen some outstanding academics rejected in favour of some (in the school's opinion) lesser, academically, qualified candidates."</p>
<p>100% correct, we should put this in the bible, :D! Also, I believe that both systems are flawed, but Cambridge's system is less so.</p>
<p>They are both flawed, as any system that is trying to deal with such a vast number of applicants will be. My current feeling is that recently Cambridge (and ox) have taken greater steps to eradicate these flaws. The skills tests are one such example, now used very widely across the subjects. They are much more demanding than SATs and students cannot prepare for them like they do SATs. They provide a boost the the traditionally underrepresented student at Cambridge who underperforms in interviews through lack of preparation or experience and whose grades may not be at the level of some applicants who have been to better schools.
I don't want to sound like i'm knocking the US process excessively though, because I do accept that they are looking for different things. I do also appreciate the importance of not just selecting students because of pure academic ability and for society to function we need a vast range of skills, and Princeton will select these better than Cambridge. Sometimes I wonder just how well their system selects those students who do excell at things other than academics and what the correct balance in the student body ideally should be.</p>