<p>Sefago, all rankings are subjective to a degree. Like you, I tend to prefer Cambridge to Oxford. However, Oxford has several characteristics that make it exceptional. There is a reason why Engish publications rank Oxford #1 as often as Cambridge.</p>
<p>In terms of raw academics, as the link below would suggest, Cambridge generally seems to be a step ahead of Oxford. However, the difference between the two is truly marginal and I believe both schools are among the top universities in the World.</p>
<p>The universities have different strengths and weaknesses. In terms of research and intellectual capacity, which I think the discussion has been based on, the two are about equal, along with Columbia, UChicago, Stanford, Penn, Yale, etc. However, if you add the strength of professional schools to the discussion to come up with an overall assessment of the universities, Harvard would dominate over any other universities in the world with maybe the exception of Stanford. Oxford and Cambridge would be on the level of Columbia, Berkeley, UChicago, UMich, and Penn.</p>
<p>I went to UWC, and from what I’ve seen and heard, the top high school students (from all over the world) almost always choose not just Harvard, but the rest of the Ivy League with the exception of Cornell, over Oxford, Cambridge, and LSE. Generally speaking, the only students who chose Oxbridge+LSE over the Ivy League (less Cornell) were ones who wanted to save money (from well off but not rich families) by graduating in three years or ones who want to have majors that weren’t offered at some of the Ivies (such as architecture). Emma Watson turned down Cambridge for Brown.</p>
<p>I think for a lot of high schools students who populates this board, they have an idealized view of universities in other countries. That’s why there are so many Oxbridge is so great, McGill is so great, threads. Once you actually attend those foreign schools as students, you would realize that they are at most as good as top American universities. Even Harvard of England, Japan, Germany, etc. are just the Harvard of England, Japan, Germany, and they are no where near Harvard.</p>
<p>^ they dont have professional schools in the UK, they are more in faculties- they are all integrated into one university system- So medicine and law would be seen as part of the undergraduate in the UK and nearly every part of the world</p>
<p>“In terms of raw academics, as the link below would suggest, Cambridge generally seems to be a step ahead of Oxford. However, the difference between the two is truly marginal and I believe both schools are among the top universities in the World.”</p>
<ul>
<li>If i remember correctly the methodology used for this study is shady. They use student surveys also which is kind of weird. Not really a good judge of academics though it makes sense that if the student is not satisfied the school must suck lol</li>
</ul>
<p>“I went to UWC, and from what I’ve seen and heard, the top high school students (from all over the world) almost always choose not just Harvard, but the rest of the Ivy League with the exception of Cornell, over Oxford, Cambridge, and LSE. Generally speaking, the only students who chose Oxbridge+LSE over the Ivy League (less Cornell) were ones who wanted to save money (from well off but not rich families) by graduating in three years or ones who want to have majors that weren’t offered at some of the Ivies (such as architecture). Emma Watson turned down Cambridge for Brown.”</p>
<p>I don’t think that is accurate. Cornell’s international reputation is stronger than Brown’s or Dartmouth’s and matches Penn’s. Most international students would choose HYP over Oxbridge but would choose Oxbridge over the rest of the Ivies.</p>
<p>Emma Watson did not turn down Cambridge in favor of Brown for academic reasons. She obviously had personal reasons, but she does not represent the masses of international students, most of which would choose Cambridge over Brown 9 times out of 10.</p>
<p>These days, Oxford and Harvard are easily comparable and often considered the top 2 universities in the world. There are significant differences, but I don’t think either is really considered “better” than the other. There are obvious geographic preferences: the English are partial to Oxford, while Americans are partial to Harvard. Cost is different, campuses are very different, but academics are top notch at both.</p>
<p>"How do we know that? To the best of my knowledge the reasons why she chose Brown are not at all clear. "</p>
<p>I don’t know that for a fact coureur, but I know the English well and their view on undergraduate education is pretty uniform. Even among the most educated, many of which even studied in the US, they firmly believe that Oxbridge (as well as Imperial, LSE and UCL) are better than most American universities for undergraduate education. There are exceptions of course, but even from a subjective point of view, Cambridge is slightly stronger than Brown and is viewed as such by the majority of Europeans. Ms. Watson had her reasons for chosing Brown, but I am fairly certain that beliving Brown to be superior to Cambridge academically was not one of them. She may have wanted to live in the US for a change, or perhaps liked Brown’s flexible curriculum and graduation requirements. Who knows.</p>
<p>FWIW, I recall lots of international students at Cornell. Particularly in areas such as agriculture, engineering, physical sciences, hotel administration, architecture. At the time, its programs in these areas were considered pretty darned good. </p>
<p>I remember one year I dormed with some grad students from UK, Taiwan, Dominican Republic and Panama. It was pretty entertaining hearing the latter two go off on each other about politics. Three of the four, at least, were having their countries pay for them to attend, so I guess those countries thought the programs there were pretty good.</p>
<p>A lot of the world considers agriculture (and engineering) to be pretty important, I think. A guy from China who worked for me a while ago said the only thing his government would pay tuition for him to study in the US was agriculture. But if the agriculture programs at Oxford and cambridge are better, I guess those students should go there instead.</p>
<p>I can’t say for the other universities mentioned, but for Cambridge, I am quite certain that this isn’t the case. Cambridge’s enrollment yield has always been extremely high – only quite a few admitted students don’t accept the offer. And I have not known or heard anyone who chose Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth, Brown or Cornell over Cambridge.</p>
<p>^ Depends on where they are from. Tons of non-british international students would choose Columbia, Penn and those schools you mention based on financial aid. If they are gunning on prestige then they would obviously run to cambridge. These are obviously nonacademic reasons. For example, a lot of the students at UWCs are some of the best in their countries so the large majority would easily “walk” or into Cambridge or oxford. But a lot of them cannot finance it so would take the Ivy league or Williams and Amherst over it being aware that they would be getting the same education from them. This is what happens to tons of Internationals RML who are not from wealthy backgrounds.</p>
<p>The debate is about which school is better- when selecting a school prestige always trumps academics for the large majority of high school students. When you grow older thats when you can reason a bit better. There is no academic difference between Cambridge/oxford and brown but there is a lot of prestige difference.</p>
[quote]
I don’t know that for a fact coureur, but I know the English well and their view on undergraduate education is pretty uniform. Even among the most educated, many of which even studied in the US, they firmly believe that Oxbridge (as well as Imperial, LSE and UCL) are better than most American universities for undergraduate education.
[quote]
</p>
<p>thats the English view duh. Germans consider their education better than American education too. When you are paying 3000 pounds on tertiary education you dont really care too much about quality do you? From experience, apart from Oxbridge going from Imperial and heading down the undergraduate quality at british schools is about equivalent to state schools and lower privates. Not top 20 quality. This is a non-biased and informed analysis not based on subjective perception.</p>
<p>safego, the admit ratio at Cambridge is low, something like 1:4 or 1:5. But the yield rate at Cambridge is very high – almost 100%. In fact, this was even published on TIMES ONLINE. Most Cambridge applicants are self-selective. They all know that Cambridge is not as generous as some of the Ivies, so most Cambridge applicants are “can-afford” or rich, or have government-sponsored scholarships. The enrollment yield in my college, which is one of the least popular colleges at Cambridge, is almost 100%! My college is not even the host of top kids that want to enroll in Cambridge for the institution’s strong economics, maths, computer science, engineering, social science and several physical science programs. That’s substantially better than Harvard’s.</p>
<p>^ thats because there are many Harvard equivalents in the US. At least 10 schools can be seen as offering the same education as Harvard. So yes 24% of the accepted students would ditch Harvard for elsewhere. For schools like Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, Williams, Amherst, Columbia e.t.c There are no other Oxbridge equivalents in the UK to be honest. Some people know the difference between prestige and actual academic quality.</p>
<p>The other schools in the UK just use the standard lecture format, assign you some coursework, do some tutorials in which the professor is not really interested in and then give you an exam at the end of a module. Am I wrong? Oxbridge offer a better educational system so why choose that over another school?</p>
<p>No its not. Its about the size of cornell. Considering the fact that this includes the law and medical school, its around the size of a mid-sized private by the time you zip out the professional programs. That’s why it can provide strong academics. Not large like Manchester University or Nottingham University or American mega sized Michigan or Berkeley</p>
<p>“From experience, apart from Oxbridge going from Imperial and heading down the undergraduate quality at british schools is about equivalent to state schools and lower privates. Not top 20 quality. This is a non-biased and informed analysis not based on subjective perception.”</p>
<p>I agree sefago. There is a big drop between #2 and #3 in the UK. Other than Oxbridge, no British university has the facilities or resources to match the top American universities (including the top publics). Imperial Engineering is a notch below Carnegie Mellon or Georgia Tech to say nothing of Cal or MIT. LSE is not quite on par with Columbia or NU, to say nothing of Chicago or Princeton. UCL is slightly weaker than Cornell and Michigan, to say nothing of Harvard or Stanford. </p>
<p>Imperial, LSE and UCL combined have over 40,000 students and endowments well under $500 million (or $13,000/student). That’s just too little to keep up with America’s elite universities, most of which have endowments greater than $100,000/student.</p>
<p>This said, most Brits do not see it that way. Given the choice between Imperial and say Cornell, most Brits would choose Imperial. Given the choice between LSE and Chicago, most Brits would choose LSE.</p>
<p>Sefago, I was being facetious, although my statement was not incorrect. Oxford (and Cambridge) has 12,000 undergrads. That may not be huge (and I did not say it was), but it certainly is large. Cornell and UVa are generally described as large, and they have 13,000-14,000 undergrads. And Oxford is public.</p>
<p>Of course, given their huge endowments (3-4 billion Pounds each) and federal funding, Oxbridge manage very well.</p>
<p>Well I would point out that these endowments are irrelevant- these universities are publicly funded by the government so the need for the massive endowments that American universities have is not really required.</p>
<p>I would take a contrary view that these universities are well funded in terms of research and even spending per student.</p>
<p>I am actually talking of academic quality- meaning the education offered in terms of material in class, and the quality of the student body and difficulty of material presented in class. A lot of the schools operate on large class sized basis and they dont have TAs which do most of the work in large classes so you dont get the continual feedback on classes until you take your exam. So you could take a whole class without really knowing how well you know the material until you screw up in the final exam. Sadly this is not what I consider quality education.</p>
<p>Imperial grads make the most money out of all grads of any other UK uni according to a survey. LSE is the top choice for those who want to go into investment banking. Nonetheless, neither uni is superior to top American school like Chicago, NU, UMich, UPenn, Columbia or Cornell.</p>
<p>“I don’t think that is accurate. Cornell’s international reputation is stronger than Brown’s or Dartmouth’s and matches Penn’s. Most international students would choose HYP over Oxbridge but would choose Oxbridge over the rest of the Ivies.”</p>
<p>Yes. Cornell does have a huge international reputation, but high school students at elite international schools are choosing mostly based on USNews. Of the high schools students I know from UWC (in another word, ones who actually have what it takes to make to the Ivies), everyone knows how good Dartmouth, Williams, etc. are, and most choose them over Cornell.</p>
<p>“And I have not known or heard anyone who chose Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth, Brown or Cornell over Cambridge.”</p>
<p>Of the high school student I knew from UWC, whom you could say are the elite (in a smart and/or rich way) international crowd, a lot of students choose Columbia, Dartmouth, Wharton, and Brown over Cambridge. Those students know that Cambridge really only appeals to the very intellectual type and the wealth-but-cost-matter type. Back then, I felt that another reason that students opt for the Ivies is because of a the United States is far superior to other countries attitude among the students at top international schools, especially among students from Asia, who view schools in the US far more desirable than anywhere else (including Oxbridge).</p>
<p>In all, the Ivy League as a whole was viewed as equivalent to Oxbridge. Ivies + Stanford + MIT + UChicago + Northwestern + JHU + William + Amherst + Swarthmore etc. was viewed as equivalent of Oxbridge + LSE + Imperial + UCL + Warwick. Harvard was viewed as superior to Oxford, which was jokingly referred to as the Harvard of the UK. At least at UWC.</p>