<p>Why you want to know the general public’s opinion?</p>
<p>Give you an analogy:</p>
<p>Statement: My daughter goes to University of Chicago…
General Public Remarks: Is that a brench of the University in Champain?</p>
<p>Thanks again sefago 
Good luck to you too in whatever endeavors you may embark upon</p>
<p>GeraldM … well ive made my decision anyway… I’ll just see where I end up in the next few years</p>
<p>artloversplus… read the quote in sefago’s last post… </p>
<p>and also, how do you delete a thread?</p>
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<p>Actually LSE and Oxford are really respected in the US. You can probably have no difficulty finding a contingent at Harvard who would argue that LSE is just as good as Harvard. Its that famous. </p>
<p>This follows from one of my points which was that in the US tech/science schools like Imperial and even to some degree Cambridge do not have the same lay reputation in the states. Caltech and CMU suffer similar fates in terms of reputation because well they are large tech schools only accessible to “geeks” and people who love sitting in their room coding all day. The reverse in the case would be countries like Asia (South+East) where they are experiencing a technological boom- and where there is more of an emphasis on STEM education. The tech universities are pretty well known in regions like Asia. </p>
<p>I was just reading an article of how a 8 out of 9 top government politicians in china are engineers while the reverse is in western countries with more and more lawyers and well humanities major. Reflects the difference in how much countries hold STEM education in high esteem.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the quality of education, but I would agree that Imperial is not at all well known by the general public in the US, and that very, very few US students would consider going there. I have never seen it on the list of any student here on CC, for example, and that’s a relatively knowledgeable group. But this is simply because very few US students consider schools in other countries at all.</p>
<p>Just want to emphasize this: Although Cambridge is generally considered as the top one uni for science and engineering in the UK, it also excels in almost all other fields it offers – from languages/literature to history, social sciences, law, humanities and arts.</p>
<p>On topic: I’d rather go to RPI than Imperial. And, RPI isn’t even in the top 50 in the US, if we based that on the USNews ranking.</p>
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I don’t think Princeton’s as well known as you think it is, especially on the West Coast. The same seems to hold true for Stanford in the Midwest and parts of the East Coast. Most people in Illinois when I lived there thought Stanford was a jock school and thought the high school valedictorian was crazy to consider it over Yale. I would agree that Harvard and Yale are the two most preeminent universities nationally and in the world along with Oxford with MIT as well due to its status as the premier engineering school in the world.</p>
<p>Overall, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Notre Dame and Duke all have extremely national reputations and alumni networks. The remaining 5 Ivies will filter into the next group since their alums are mostly concentrated in the Northeast.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about Michigan and UNC but most people regard Notre Dame and Duke as extremely prestigious academic institutions that also have strong athletic programs. Notre Dame is the most prestigious Catholic institution in the country and Duke is by far the most academically distinguished university in the Southern half of the United States except for Caltech (which is relatively unknown).</p>
<p>As far as British schools go, Oxford and Cambridge form a clear first tier while LSE and UCL constitue an obvious second group. Its guesswork after that to determine the standings of Imperial, Warwick, Bristol, Durham, etc.</p>
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I would without a doubt choose RPI over Imperial if my intention was to work in the United States. RPI grads find employment quite easily and their graduates make more money than half of the Ivy League schools after Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth according to Payscale.</p>
<p>Engineering is a very hands-on and content-based field of study that is not based on institutional prestige and connections like I-Banking. RPI grads flourish in the marketplace due to their strong technical skills that are developed through their extensive coop program.</p>
<p>“Overall, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Notre Dame and Duke all have extremely national reputations and alumni networks.”</p>
<p>I think you are overvaluing Duke too. In the midwest, it really isn’t considered all that, with the exception of people who are slaves to USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>“Notre Dame is the most prestigious Catholic institution in the country and Duke is by far the most academically distinguished university in the Southern half of the United States except for Caltech (which is relatively unknown).”</p>
<p>Southern half? I don’t think anyone considers California to be in the southern half of anything, unless you’re talking about southern California. Don’t kid yourself either, most people think of football and basketball first when the names ND and Duke are mentioned.</p>
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Really? I grew up in Illinois and have known that Duke was a prestigious school since I was in elementary school. I recall watching a Big 10 basketball game being announced by Dick Vitale (who is obsessed with ACC Basketball and Duke in particular) and then all of a sudden Dick started going off on a tangent like he always does and talks about how amazing the crowd was at a Duke game he had announced for and how all the students there were “destined to become famous lawyers, doctors and bankers” unlike other schools with good sports programs. After hearing that, I asked my dad later at dinner that day if Duke was a good school and he responded, “Its one of the best around”. So voila there you have it, I learned about a school’s academic prestige as a result of its athletic dominance and became an informed layman.</p>
<p>I can’t think of the same specific anecdote about how I learned of Notre Dame’s great academic reputation but NBC always seems to tout ND’s academic pedigree during football games while CBS/ESPN do the same when Duke’s basketball team plays on TV. These two universities have been able to channel their athletic prowess and use that as a means to elevate the excellence of their academic programs to a vast swathe of Americans around the country.</p>
<p>Duke’s Basketball team is currently touring in the UAE and China in collaboartion with Duke’s Fuqua business school and the praise is coming from left and right. I bet Duke has doubled its academic reputation in China this past week alone from the exposure its basketball team has given the school. Those Chinese are obsessed with basketball!</p>
<p>[Coach</a> K in memorable place|Sports|chinadaily.com.cn](<a href=“http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-08/22/content_13160002.htm]Coach”>Coach K in memorable place - Chinadaily.com.cn)
[Layup</a> line: Doc to China … with Duke - Boston Celtics Blog - ESPN Boston](<a href=“http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/celtics/post/_/id/4686182/layup-line-doc-to-china-with-duke]Layup”>Layup line: Doc to China ... with Duke - ESPN - Boston Celtics Blog- ESPN)</p>
<p>Why doesn’t Ross help expand Michigan’s brand in Asia with the help of its football team or Kenan-Flagler help expand UNC’s rep in the East with some assitance from their basketball team? Perhaps these schools don’t have the financial resources to do so since they too can be as prestigious as Notre Dame, Duke and Stanford are one day.</p>
<p>“Why doesn’t Ross help expand Michigan’s brand in Asia with the help of its football team or Kenan-Flagler help expand UNC’s rep in the East with some assitance from their basketball team?”</p>
<p>Perhaps because Michigan is well known in Asia and has been for over 150 years and doesn’t need to rely on any sports team to spread it’s already formidable reputation?</p>
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<p>Well, I wouldn’t. It has nothing to do with prestige or employment opportunities. I just think Imperial has superior faculty and more in-depth course offerings than RPI. It certainly offers better academic preparation for graduate school (PhD training) than RPI, which is something that personally matters a lot to me.</p>
<p>@sefago: I admit I may have misused the term “grade deflation”. Strictly speaking, grade inflation or deflation are dynamic concepts that don’t have to with the grade level per se, but rather with its rate of change. In other words, there is “grade inflation” when average grades increase over time. </p>
<p>What I really meant was not that average grades at Imperial or LSE have been consistently falling over the years (which is probably not true), but rather that average grades for the same degree courses are consistently lower at Imperial or LSE than at Oxford/Cambridge, which in turn seems to have a negative effect on student satisfaction.</p>
<p>Note that I didn’t get into the discussion on why London students tend to underperform compared to their Oxbridge peers . It is unlikely that standards/exams at Imperial or LSE are higher/tougher than at Oxford/Cambridge. You may be right then when you say that London students do worse because of “bad teaching”. Or, alternatively, we may have to consider the possibility that Oxbridge undergrads are simply better students and/or more motivated/dedicated to their studies than their London counterparts. Or there may well be a combination of all of the above. Since I don’t have hard evidence to back any of those claims, I simply cannot tell for sure.</p>
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<p>Cambridge is supposed to be a “general-purpose” university, which accordingly covers many different fields (like Harvard in the US for example). Imperial and LSE are a different category though.</p>
<p>Even though both [Imperial](<a href=“Imperial College London”>http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/aboutimperial</a>) and [LSE](<a href=“http://www2.lse.ac.uk/aboutLSE/aboutHome.aspx”>http://www2.lse.ac.uk/aboutLSE/aboutHome.aspx</a>) are referred to and indeed refer to themselves as “universities”, they were not originally conceived as such. Instead, they were independent specialist colleges within the federal University of London (LSE technically still is so; Imperial withdrew from the federal university in 2007). Their focus, both in research and teaching, is therefore much narrower than that of a general university like Cambridge.</p>
<p>Having said that, I believe Imperial ** does excel ** in almost all degrees it offers: medicine, the different engineering specialties, math, computer science, physics, chemistry, and biology/life sciences. LSE on the other hand doesn’t fare quite that well IMHO. It offers world-class (and highly selective) programs e.g. in economics and law, which may even compare favorably to Cambridge’s (at least research-wise), but it does have a few other departments which, although still high-ranked on RAE and the league tables, are not equally strong/selective or at the same world-class level in comparison. That’s why I said early in the thread that, in the grand scheme of things, I think Imperial is a stronger school overall than LSE.</p>
<p>Anyway, Imperial and LSE have largely complementary sets of courses (Imperial specializing in engineering, medicine, and natural/physical sciences; and LSE on humanities, law, and social sciences). Because of that, I’ve always thought it would make sense for the two to merge into a bigger “general-purpose” university that could truly rival Oxbridge in prestige. Although the merger idea has been mentioned occasionally, it doesn’t really seem to have been ever taken seriously by the two colleges.</p>
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<p>Off-topic Graduate school is about narrowing down to solve specific question in your field. Research experience and the ability to critically evaluate research journals and formulate viable and testable research questions. Taking loads of classes is not going to help you. </p>
<p>And this is one of the reasons why tiny schools like Swarthmore, haverford and Oberlin who focus more on training the critical thinking skills of students and emphasize undergraduate research have produced students who have gone to win science nobel laureates and make a lasting contribution to science while Imperial College students have only one student goign on to win a nobel at the undergraduate level despite being focussed on science and engineering. </p>
<p>I know- nobels are just one mark of scientific excellence and are quite arbitrary and difficult- but it does place into perspective the fact that well if a school is that rigorous scientifically, its going to produce a strong pool of intellectually curious students who will later on go on and win a nobel. And despite the obvious rarity of the prize extremely tiny schools some located in rural/podunk town USA have managed to have 3-5 of their students going ahead to win them.</p>
<p>Also brings to question, why there are so few if any “big guys” in the field of science from Imperial College. If the rigour as you claim is so high- where are the scientific superstars from this school? Like in the fields of molecular biology, physics, and chemistry. Why do all the big science guys in Europe come from Oxbridge, other poorly “internationally ranked” continental european universities/Asian universities. The other non-oxbridge schools perform poorly relatively to oxbridge but this is not the case in the US. </p>
<p>You gotta grudgingly respect state schools like Mich and Cal who reel out loads of science superstars comparable to the HYPSM so they do even have strong arguments for claiming to be the best at what they do. When someones say Cal is good at physics- they can reel out the name of great physicists from Cal, they could go on for a whole day. You could keep talking about inventors and CEOs of start-ups of tech firms. </p>
<p>But some schools that claim to be “focussed” cannot do the same. Begs the question- whats the point of the science focus when well you are not producing enough world leading academics for your size. Your only strength lays in employing foreign educated faculty to make your university world class.</p>
<p>Of course its arguable that there is no causality between the top-notch academics that emerge from specific schools and the rigour of the program. However, for me to infer a school possess rigour, I must be able to see suitable outcomes of that rigour as oppossed to pure speculation. Its kind of intuitive that more rigorous schools could tend to produce students who would later excel as research students. HYPSMC+Columbia as well as Oxbridge and to a lesser degree Cornell, Berkeley and Michigan keep producing world leading academics. They have a very strong argument for the science training they provide their undergraduates.</p>
<p>I am not talking about faculty (some who were trained at foreign universities) but the products of that particular system. </p>
<p>What I ask then is what evidence and outcome have the speculative rigour of certain schools provided to society. Specifically, what earth-shattering research has an Imperial college graduate contributed to the field of science and engineering in the past three decades?</p>
<p>Herd mentality, which just means following international league tables without a critical analysis of the methodology itself, is really not something I am into.</p>
<p>“You gotta grudgingly respect state schools like Mich and Cal who reel out loads of science superstars comparable to the HYPSM so they do even have strong arguments for claiming to be the best at what they do.”</p>
<p>Grudgingly? Just because they are public? Don’t you think that sound a bit condescending on your part? As if those publics don’t deserve to be mentioned with other top schools at all.</p>
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<p>Not really because they are public but because of their seemingly low selectivity. So it would be make sense then that only the best students in Michigan (possibly due to rigour) pass through the science curriculum as opposed to the average student hence the high number of academics from Michigan. Basically the science programs weeds students out. Thats what I think, I might be wrong you tell. Its the same in all colleges- some science/engineering programs have 50% weedout rates. Speculative, I know but I am quite curious why Michigan and Berkeley tend to produce a lot of academics/PhDs (undergraduates) for schools with such low selectivity. Possibly rigour- but anecdotes say they are not as rigourous as I hear on CC. So I am still inconclusive yet.</p>
<p>But lets be honest- average student at Michigan isnt awe-inspiring intellectually- you and I know that lol. Dont worry, you can agree with me here, the Duke kids are probaly off CC watching/playing some lacrosse.</p>
<p>^^^Might the reason be that these students excell at Michigan and Cal is because of the superior faculty, staff, and facilities? Let’s be honest here; I think student quality that is based on a few hour test that is often taken by wealthy, professionally coached 17 year olds is a bit overrated. There are intellectual superstars at ALL the top schools, just not all of them have the superstars to teach them.</p>