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<p>You definitely have a point here: lower acceptance rate does not necessarily equal more difficulty to get in. It may be, as you say, that the LSE only gets more applications from underqualified candidates. </p>
<p>In any case, let me qualify what I wrote before. I meant I’d pick LSE over Oxbridge for **economics ** in particular.</p>
<p>It completely depends on the course. When it comes to Law, Kings could rival LSE easily. LSE is more competitive in some courses while Kings in others.</p>
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<p>Are you British? I hope not because you obviously know nothing about our universities. Kings is one of the most prestigious universities in Europe. Its VERY appearing to employers and could rival Cornell, Dartmouth and Berkeley very easily in my opinion.</p>
<p>^ I second that</p>
<p>@bruno123: LSE IS ranked higher than Berkeley. And I believe it is more competitive after you get in since it has more international students (who tend to be over-qualified than their British counterparts) than Oxford and Cambridge.</p>
<p>Cambridge and Oxford’s economics departments are very much comparable to that of LSE. Times ranks Cambridge higher than LSE, in fact:</p>
<p>[University</a> Rankings League Table 2009 | Good University Guide - Times Online](<a href=“The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines”>The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines)</p>
<p>This is referring specifically to economics, not “social sciences” in general.</p>
<p>For international students ,LSE is considered more reachable than US top economics colleges because LSE admits students considering only their Academic performance while top US colleges care a lot about ECs and prizes from international olympiads.
Furthermore,US colleges cost muuuch more (like 10 times more) money - and lets face it : considering the financial crisis ,the FA will be significantly lower and not many international students can afford to spend like 50k $ per year (my mum makes 6000 $ per year as teacher) …
UK colleges give the European students the opportunity to get loans that they will pay back after they graduate and start working (I have even heard that if these students graduate and go back in their countries and work there ,and earn less than specific amount ,they will not have to pay the loans back) All these little details make UK more favourable ,but I still dream to study in the USA and will choose schools like upenn,Berkeley,Dartmouth over LSE and Oxbrige if I really have the opportunity to choose</p>
<p>Yes, I’m British. I agree that King’s is a great university, but it tends to come lower in rankings tables (at least the UK ones) than LSE. While you are right that it depends on the field one’s studied in, if you’d read my last post, you would’ve seen that I emphasized that, on average, LSE tends to come higher. Not knowing what subject the OP was applying for, I recommended LSE over King’s. Employers do take university rankings into account (although, like I said, it depends on the subject).</p>
<p>That was why I specifically mentioned British employers (I’m not sure how LSE and King’s rank in European university charts, which may be done differently).</p>
<p>Back on topic: At American universities, you choose your major after a few years, as opposed to the British system. You might want to take that into account unless you’re sure of what you want to study.</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>LSE is much easier to get into than Dartmouth
it only requires a straight-up AAA/AAB, for god’s sake</p>
<p>I know a guy that got into Dartmouth without any ,absolutely any ECs</p>
<p>^Hey, what were his stats? I’m a little lacking on the EC side, but I’m applying to Dartmouth this autumn.</p>
<p>Dartmouth - overrated. Sorry. Had to say it and this is backed by I know who went there. The other schools in your American list are excellent, especially Berkeley. Great social science departments. </p>
<p>Since you seem to want to do Econ, go to LSE. London is awesome and the econ course is top notch. The only way I’d advise you to go to the US is if you really want a liberal arts education, don’t know what you want to study, or want to study more than one thing. Do look into the Econ curriculum at LSE, though. You don’t have many options in terms of class choices and everything is heavily math-centered. I was interested in LSE and looked at the International Relations course and was pretty disappointed because there was absolutely no foreign language requirement and class choices were very narrow.</p>
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<p>Minority options aside, if you have international golden medals or any other academic recognitions of similar type, you can easily get into harvard. I know a guy (international) who got into MIT with 400 CR, 800 Physics, and 2 golden medals on international physics olympiade</p>
<p>^^^^^^^^^^^^
@to all guys and ppl from UK/USA and Asia.
Please list down the names of few cheap colleges and universities ,four years Bachelor’s in Computer Science/Engineering in UK…it’s better if you list the names of colleges that are ranked in UK or in the whole world and that wud provide scholarship to international students too.</p>
<p>berkeley provides a comparatively terrible undergrad education (as does any UK school not named Oxford or Cambridge)</p>
<p>bluebubbles knows absolutely nothing</p>
<p>Serf, I live in the UK so I think I know quite a bit more about English colleges than you do. And to say that British schools like LSE, St. Andrews, UCL, King’s, and Imperial (along with several others) are “terrible” is preposterous. This is coming from someone who doesn’t even like the English college system (not because it’s “bad” but because I want to double major in two completely different things).</p>
<p>Please find me anything (a ranking, professional opinions, student reviews) that says a Berkeley education is terrible. And, hey once again, this is coming from someone who hates big schools.</p>
<p>Serf you obviously do not live in the u.k or know much about universities here there is more than just oxbridge here as blue bubbles stated and for certain subjects oxbridge isnt necessarily the best for example economics - LSE and some engineering courses/medicine - imperial are equally good as the courses at oxbridge.
As for berkley from what ive heard it seems they provide an excellent undergrad education.</p>
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<p>True, but note that LSE gets a 5*A grade for research, compared to 5B in the case of Cambridge (not that excellence in research means a better undergrad education, but it may have some impact when applying to grad school, especially in the US).</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m not an economist nor an economics student, so I’m probably not qualified to comment. Looking superficially at the undergraduate economics curriculum at the LSE vs Cambridge or Oxford, it would appear to a layman like myself that LSE provides a more rigorous program(me), certainly more in line with curricula found in top US universities, with a greater emphasis on math and the quantitative aspects of economics. </p>
<p>Oxford in particular doesn’t look very appealing to me as economics is not studied as a single subject, but diluted together with management or, even worse, philosophy and politics in the PPE course (perhaps a more “traditional” view of economics from the days of “political economy” ?).</p>
<p>BTW, the [econphd.net rankings](<a href=“Loading...”>Loading...), both for general economics and specialty areas within economics, put LSE well ahead of any other ** non-US university **, whereas Oxford and Cambridge tend to have a comparatively much lower standing. </p>
<p>Keep in mind those are ** PhD rankings **, based essentially on scholarly productivity measures (publications, citations, impact factor, etc.). As I said before, they are not necessarily related to quality of undergraduate education. It is just another evidence that LSE’s economics probably has more international prestige/visibility in academic circles than Oxbridge’s.</p>
<p>In any case, economics, especially at the graduate level, is one of those few subjects in which most neutral observers tend to agree that top US universities are much stronger than their European counterparts.</p>