<p>Just wondering which UK unis are most well known in the US apart from the usual Oxford and Cambridge. Please rank them from most well known to least well known.</p>
<p>1a. Oxford
1b. Cambridge</p>
<h2>3. LSE</h2>
<h2>-</h2>
<p>-</p>
<h2>4. UCL</h2>
<h2>-</h2>
<ol>
<li>rest</li>
</ol>
<p>To the general public, probably no British universities are well known. They don’t send players to the NFL or NBA or play in bowl games.</p>
<p>The professional world tends to have heard of Oxford and Cambridge and LSE but knows nothing about them.</p>
<p>The academic world may know people who have studied there or who teach there or may know about research that originated there.</p>
<p>Most well-known academically: Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, Imperial College, UCL.</p>
<p>Most well-known thanks to Prince William and Kate Middleton: St. Andrews.</p>
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<p>Here in North Carolina, Oxford and Cambridge are very well known to the general public, probably as well known as any of the Ivy League universities. A number of NC college professors, from the most prestigious universities to the smallest, more obscure colleges, have graduate degrees from Oxbridge. And, yes, St. Andrews is quite well-known as well. However, that preceded Will and Kate. There was a large migration of Highland Scots to eastern NC in the 1700’s, and their descendants in Scotland County founded a college that is now known as St. Andrews University.</p>
<p>Among more academically-minded people, Durham University is also very highly regarded. It is not well-known among members of the general public, though, except for Harry Potter fans.</p>
<p>Two graduates of our HS are going to St. Andrews. LSE is very well know but specializes in business/economics so may not be for everyone.</p>
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<p>Well, that says something about the paucity of knowledge even about LSE, which specializes in a broad range of social sciences; in fact, its full name is the London School of Economics and Political Science, and it’s not particularly known as a business school.</p>
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<p>I disagree. Look, Ivy League schools don’t play in big bowl games, and they don’t send many players to the NFL or the NBA (Jeremy Lin and Ryan Fitzpatrick are notable exceptions, notable simply because it almost never happens). Yet Harvard and Yale are probably two of the most widely recognized and widely respected names in American higher education. Boatloads of people would put Oxford and Cambridge in that same category. In fact, I’d venture to guess Oxford and Cambridge have higher name recognition among the general populace in America than at least half the Ivy League schools; most Americans probably think the University of Pennsylvania is a state school, but because it’s lesser-known than Penn State, many would probably assume it’s a lower-tier state school.</p>
<p>After Oxbridge, though, it’s a long drop in name recognition. Probably LSE would come next. University College London gets some props among literary and professorial types, especially on the humanities side, as does Imperial College London in STEM fields, but these schools are not well known to the general public in America. St. Andrews is popular among a certain college-bound set in a similar way to McGill (in Montreal), as a relatively high quality, slightly offbeat but “safe” (as in low-risk) choice, though probably not that many Americans actually pull the trigger and decide to attend. Universities like Durham, Warwick, Bath, and Exeter are well respected among academics who travel in trans-Atlantic circles but would register almost zero name recognition among the general public.</p>
<p>Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry</p>
<p>I would add SOAS, which is fairly well-known among people of the academia (humanities, of course), but I doubt that anyone heard of it outside of such circles. </p>
<p>Truth is, there’s Oxbridge and that’s it. Average Joe never ever heard of any other European university, only the educated can name a few other institutions such as UCL, Imperial, LSE and, probably, St.Andrews and Edinburgh.</p>
<p>As a fact of matter this is not something unique as the same applies to people all over the world - in Europe too.</p>