<p>“You are missing the point. The UK may be indeed small, but it has been a sea-faring, trading nation for over 500 years, with extensive links not only to continental Europe, but also to most of the outside world (the Americas, east Asia, India, Africa, Australia, you name it !).”
So does the US. Of the top investment banks in the world, 6 are American, 2 are Swiss, 1 is German, and just 1 is British. Four of top five investment banks in Asia are American as well. Accept it, the age of Britain has long gone, Britain doesn’t have many elite firms now a days. You do still have BP though (if you even still consider it British).</p>
<p>But honestly, why can’t people realize that the school you attend don’t matter nearly as much as how well you do at your school? If you go to HYP, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, Oxbridge, so what? A undergrad from the University of Wisconsin can end up kicking your ass when it comes to recruiting and succeeding in life. I’m out.</p>
<p>Interesting thread. Since it’s severely off the OP’s topic, let’s get it back on track. If you are an American, I think that you should focus on American schools if you need financial aid. You can get the best education at the best value in the US (from HYP, Brown, Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, Penn, etc.). If you don’t qualify for financial aid and don’t want to pay too much, going to your state’s flagship and doing well there (which shouldn’t be a problem for you) would enable you to get into any Ph.D. program at anywhere you want. Or if you don’t qualify for financial aid and don’t want to pay too much, you can attend an UK school (Oxbridge, LSE, etc.) because you would only be paying for three years instead of four with cost per year similar to that of attending an Ivy.</p>
Although a bachelor (BSc or equivalent) is three years in the UK most students study for four years to get a masters (not US equivalent but required to have a professionally recognized degree).</p>
<p>If you’d want to work with engineering in UK for example or even if you’d want to do a PhD it would usually be expected that you have studied four years at undergraduate level.</p>
<p>That is indeed true in engineering (where the 4-year MEng is now the standard undergraduate degree in England). Four-year degrees are also increasingly common in physics, chemistry, computer science and mathematics, but, in many universities, 4th-year enrollment is restricted to top students only. </p>
<p>In the case of social sciences ( e.g. anthropology, sociology, economics), law, arts & humanities (history, philosophy, english, etc.), and, incidentally, biological sciences (with the exception of biochemistry), 3-year bachelor’s degrees are still the norm. Graduates of those courses must normally get a separate one-year taught master’s degree before they can successfully apply to a PhD/DPhil program.</p>
<p>Just wanted to point out this outrageous bit of ignorance. Imperial is almost unknown in the USA, true, but it is extremely well-known and regarded in most of Asia and Africa. That you don’t know this suggests you have no knowledge about anything outside the US.</p>