<p>Among the US universities that made the list:
3. Harvard
4. Berkeley
5. MIT
6. Stanford
8. Princeton
9. Caltech
12. Cornell
14. Yale
17. Chicago
22. UCLA
23. UT-Austin
24. Illinois
28. Columbia
32. UCSB
33. Johns Hopkins
39. Michigan
45. UCSD
51. UPenn
74. UWash
75. Penn State
76. SUNY Stony Brook
86. Georgia Tech
92. UMass
96. Michigan State</p>
<p>Niceness, Imperial(from which I currently have a conditional offer for chemistry) ranked in the top ten in the world for science. That makes me happy.</p>
<p>Right, Beijing University (China) is ranked right after Imperial, ahead of Yale and Chicago. </p>
<p>I wish people will stop posting the London Times ranking all over the forum. It's not worth the paper it's printed on.</p>
<p>If someone posts it on a forum then it is not printed on paper. </p>
<p>GoBlue81, do you hate all college rankings or do you selectively choose the ones you dont like? </p>
<p>All rankings can be good as long as they have some basis for their ranking criteria. More often than not people dont like specific rankings because their school did not do as well as they would have liked.</p>
<p>And what were those criteria?</p>
<p>What I'm really 'attacking' is the credibility of the London Times ranking. London Times recently published another world ranking of "Top 50 universities" which is not much better. Granted that LT may be the expert on UK universities, but when it comes to ranking universities around the world, they are out of their league.</p>
<p>Seems to me the LT list was compiled by a team of statisticians with little or no knowledge of the academic world. They fed the data into some sort of formula and came up with the list. If the ranking contains significant discrepancies (e.g., Beijing University), you have to question the validity of the 'formula'. The London Times ranking contains so many ridiculous discrepancies that there is only one place it deserves -> in the wastebasket.</p>
<p>To illustrate how absurd this ranking is: Beijing University (#11) is not even the #1 ranked university in China. That honor belongs to Tsinghwa University, which is not even on the list (#52 on the Science list)!</p>
<p>It is like ranking top US universities without considering HYP! Are you telling me that LT knows more about universities in China than the Chinese?</p>
<p>Here's more examples - On the top 50 list,</p>
<ol>
<li>Tokyo University</li>
<li>U of Chicago</li>
<li>Beijing University</li>
<li>National U of Singapore</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>U Penn</li>
<li>U of Michigan</li>
</ol>
<p>How many of you guys are willing to forego your change to study at Columbia and Johns Hopkins for Tokyo U, Beijing U and National U of Singapore?</p>
<p>Not a single Japanese, Chinese or Singaporean I know of...</p>
<p>GoBlue, I'm not sure if you are Chinese.</p>
<p>But, Beijing University and Tsinghwa University are constantly competing for the number one spot. Tsinghwa is not significantly better than Beijing, and vice versa.</p>
<p>I'm taking that list with a grain of salt because I feel that Columbia should not be THAT low on the list.</p>
<p>But, GO GEORGIA TECH!!!!!!</p>
<p>Let's say I am close enough to know.</p>
<p>You are correct that Beijing U is right behind TsingHwa. But in all rankings coming out from China in the last couple years, TsingHwa is consistently ranked #1, and Beijing #2 (except in PolSci).</p>
<p>However, LT ranked Beijing #11 in Science and #17 overall; while TsingHwa weighed in at #52 in Science and didn't even make the overall list!</p>
<p>The LT experts are saying that you are wrong as there is a BIG difference (41 places or more) between the two!</p>
<p>Columbia is not the only one that's misplaced. What about Yale(#14), Johns Hopkins(#33), and Michigan(#39)?</p>
<p>p.s. Why are you so happy about Georgia Tech(#86)? LT thinks it's behind Penn State(#75), and on a par with U Mass(#92) and Michigan State(#96) 8^)</p>
<p>seriously that list isn't worth a thing</p>
<p>GoBlue you really dont seem to have made much of an effort to research that ranking at all.</p>
<p>"Seems to me the LT list was compiled by a team of statisticians with little or no knowledge of the academic world. They fed the data into some sort of formula and came up with the list"</p>
<p>Which immediately shows your ignorance of the table. Had you actually bothered looking the article up you would find that it was complied by 1,300 academics from 88 nations. None of this stuff about ignorant statisticians pumping meaningless figures into a formula.
The rest of your argument against the validity of the table seems to stem from a refusal to believe that any ranking produced outside a nation could be more reliable than those produced within the nation itself, which is a bit strange really, and a rather bizarre railing against how qualified the times is to produce such a table (why should one of the worlds leading newspapers be incapable of this task)?.
Do you seriously propose that the best method of deciding the quality and international standing of a university is to ask those living in its home nation or to rely upon provincial rankings, regardless of how reliable these may be themselves and the fact that each nation will use different criteria?
Given a choice between the opinion of leading academics across a wide spectrum of nations and that of a provincial ranking provider (which usually consist of the ignorant statisticians you deplore) on the true standing and importance of a university in international terms i know which i would accept as being most reliable.</p>
<p>I'm happy about G.Tech because I live in Georgia and that's the best bang for my undergraduate buck.</p>
<p>I doubt many international academics know squat about schools in the US and their faculty.</p>
<p>First of all, the rankings among Chinese universities were polled among the leading academics in the country. And the polls consistently ranked TsingHua before Beijing U. To think that the 1300 academics in the other 87 nations know more about Chinese universities is ludicrous.</p>
<p>Any poll that ranks the #2 university 41 places ahead of #1 is suspect (TsingHua is not even on the top 50 overall list). And I am just using the most obvious example to illustrate. Look at the relative ranking of the US universities. Do you really believe that LT is more authoritative on this than 'provincial' polls like NRC or US News?</p>
<p>It is naive to think that you can poll 1300 scientists around the world and come up with a reliable international ranking. How did LT decide who they should poll and how many from each science discipline? How did they make sure that the 1300 polled have vast knowledge of the strengths of the leading universities around the world? Most scientists are focus on their own narrow field of research. A cell biologist will be hard pressed to come up with a list of the top 100 neuroscientists, much less comment on the leading chemistry, physics and mathematics programs around the world. The LT poll is no more than a beauty contest.</p>
<p>The quality of a university is much more than how many articles it publishes in the leading scientific journals, or how many Nobel larureates it has on its faculty. It's about its people, facilities and tradition. I presume few of the 1300 polled have worked in more than a handful of the leading universities; some may have never worked outside their own country. How are they qualified to rank the top programs around the world, outside their own field of specialties, if even that?</p>
<p>And lastly, as we are talking about international reputation here, you would expect that the top ranked universities will attract the most talented international students. We should see a rush of our top science students applying to Beijing U(11), Australian National(18), National U of Singapore(35; 18 overall) instead of Columbia(28), Johns Hopkins(33), Michigan(39) and Penn(51).</p>
<p>You can judge the validity of the process by its end product. Any ranking with so many discrepancies cannot be called reliable.</p>
<p>As for Beijing U. and Tsinghua U., Beijing U does have a better science program, reputation-wise or tradition-wise although statistical data shows otherwise.</p>
<p>this is bias there are no indian institutions such as IIT or IIM. They are the best with 0.05% chance of being accepted and if u get in it gaarantees u a good job and life.</p>
<p>kiran:</p>
<p>The IIT's are #31. They are all grouped into one rather than being split into seven. I don't think that's fair - it's like grouping the UCs into one.</p>
<p>This ranking is not right...UC Santa Barbara is NOT nearly 0.01% as good as IIT (UCSB is ranked #32 in this). IIT is better than Columbia for sure and is on par with CalTech and MIT.</p>
<p>Whoever published this article probably doesn't understand, as kiran pointed out, how challenging 1) admissions at IIT's are and 2) how challenging and respected the ITT's are. Employers across the nation have said IIT is as good as CalTech and MIT, and even sometimes better.</p>
<p>It's simply pathetic how outsiders and foreign organizations from the UK think they understand the United States system and when they rank their own universities (Oxford and Cambridge higher than US colleges).</p>
<p>May be THES got a lot of criticism in UK by putting UK best universities in the 5th & 6th places and now kinda repay it by foolishly push Oxbridge to the top.</p>
<p>Uhh how is the times not worth the paper it's printed on...it's one of the best newspapers in the world, far older and more reliable than the nytimes. Secondly, you must take any ranking with a grain of salt...i mean why do people think that a crap magazine like us news and world report has the monopoly on judging the relative worth of a given university. And thirdly, obvioulsy cambridge is one of the best if not the best university in the world for science...it has more graduates that have won science nobel prizes than any other university.</p>
<p>Cmh500, please provide evidence supporting that Cambridge has more Nobel Prize-winning graduates than other universities in science. Without any evidence, your argument is invalid as far as I can see.</p>