<p>I'm curious about how prestigious/competitive top universities in UK are compared with those in US. Cambridge and Oxford can be tiers with HYPSM. But how about UCL and Imperial College London?</p>
<p>Those 4 do hold their own fairly well vs the top US schools, but universities in the US simply have a LOT more resources than those in other parts of the world.</p>
<p>[List</a> of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment]List”>List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia)
[List</a> of UK universities by endowment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UK_universities_by_endowment]List”>List of universities in the United Kingdom by endowment - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Well, UCL was ranked 4th among worldwide Universities recently, so, very high. </p>
<p>The UK system has only Universities, the US LACs mirror more of an older and more sophisticated version of what in the UK is the public school secondary education. The worldwide ranking includes graduate research reputation which may or may not influence your undergrad experience.</p>
<p>Yes. American universities have enormous resources which are incomparable with those in other nations. So, how about the comparison regarding undergraduate education? It might be fairly hard, to compare, but I personally think that these UK schools are comparable with lower Ivys. I asked this question, since I’m most likely to spend my undergraduate period in UK and my graduate period in US.</p>
<p>I honestly think that Oxford and Cambridge are very comparable to top-tier Ivy. They’re essentially Ivys outside of the US, but maybe that’s just me. Regarding Imperial and UCL, I think it also depends on your major, but both are also definitely impressive and highly-regarded schools.</p>
<p>@BossyMommy
By only looking at one table is usually blindsided, since there are 3 major global university rankings out there.</p>
<p>THE is the most referenced ranking in general:
[World</a> University Rankings 2012-2013 - Times Higher Education](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/world-ranking]World”>World University Rankings 2013-14 | Times Higher Education (THE))</p>
<p>ARWU is the most referenced academic ranking:
[2013</a> World University Rankings | Academic Ranking of World Universities](<a href=“http://www.shanghairanking.com/]2013”>http://www.shanghairanking.com/)</p>
<p>I would say, UCL is in the range of 15-20 worldwide along with universities like Duke.</p>
<p>In the USA, high-quality research is dispersed across scores (if not hundreds) of universities. If you could connect the work at UK institutions to all these work centers on the US map, what would emerge would look more like an airline flight path map than a simple league table.</p>
<p>The picture of undergraduate programs lies under a dense fog bank. There is no easy, widely-accepted way to evaluate the quality of undergraduate programs at the department level except by projection from graduate program rankings. The data used to generate US News or Forbes rankings apparently is not available for UK institutions. So how would you objectively compare them?</p>
<p>Remember too that certain departments within a university can be world class (again this tends to refer to post-grad research work). </p>
<p>Another way of looking at things, aside from rankings which have it’s critics, is simply to take the major journals in the field you’re interested in and see where the authors are working/studying. </p>
<p>This is particularly relevant given that so many fields are fractured into sub-specialisms which are again broken down. It’s possible that the most interesting/relevant work in a particular field is being undertaken at State U of Back of Beyond.</p>
<p>@worry123
There are 5 times more populations in the US, thus oxbridge are comparable with US top 10 universities ( + equivalent LACs), Imperial/LSE are comparable with top 20 universities ( + equivalent LACs), UCL/Durham/Warwick/Bristol/St Andrews/Edinburgh are equivalent to top 30-top50 universities ( + equivalent LACs).</p>
<p>It’s a rough idea, but not so far from how it is, unless Americans are significantly more/less intellectual than British.</p>
<p>@BossyMommy</p>
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<p>I don’t think QS rankings are reliable resources since it’s a private company funded by universities, and in fact very subjective and controversial.</p>
<p>UCL earn its thomson reuters citation score (used by major world university rankings) mostly from medical studies. Thomson reuters consider biology and medical study most, that’s why it has a good ranking position. World university rankings are not like “(sci + eng + med + bio + soc + art)/5”, but more like “(3 x sci + 2 x eng + 4 x bio + 5 x med + 1 x soc + 0 x art)/5” (not exactly but it’s like this). For this reason, Yale has a huge disadvantage because of its smaller hard science departments for instance.</p>
<p>In addition, QS reputation scores prefer British universities much more than US universities, I guess because mainly British people join the interview held by QS.</p>
<p>Times and ARWU are slightly more reliable, at least in terms of objectivity of data collections.</p>
<p>Anyway, UCL is a good uni without any doubt, but no where near HYPSMC or Oxbridge. It’s more comparable with the Universities like NYU or USC in terms of their selectivity and research standards.</p>