<p>OHKID, while I don’t fully agree with waitingdad, your post isn’t that much better. Way to bring politics into it. No one said anything about nukes, knock it off. And yes, many students study abroad, but as I see it, most study abroad programs are cultural experiences, with more emphasis placed on experiencing the foreign environment, and less emphasis on the academic nature. This isn’t true in all cases, of course, but most people aren’t doing study abroad because it’s at the best university in the world, or whatever, they’re doing it because it’s in the UK, or India or Australia or wherever else.</p>
<p>He also didn’t say that there weren’t any top schools anywhere else, simply that the US has, overall, the best universities in the world, and I’m inclined to believe that too.</p>
<p>Also, it’s pretty easy to be selective when you have 300,000 people applying for 5,500 spots. India’s population is 3x the US’s. Don’t take hard numbers without context.</p>
<p>And OHKID, I would advise you to take your own advice and use intelligence in your next post, instead of letting your feelings get hurt and having your rationality run away.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Post #8 specifically brought politics into the picture with its mention of Obama and health care.</p></li>
<li><p>The reason why I mentioned nukes is because in my section of the country (specifically my hometown, as this hardly applies to the rest of the state), we have a strong military influence and our nuclear capabilities are often pointed to as a measure of our supermacy. I find this to be disgusting, along with the post I responded to, thus making me draw that comparison.</p></li>
<li><p>You are correct that students traditionally participate in study abroad for learning about culture, but they do attend reputable universities while they are abroad, frequently ones that are on par with their home university.</p></li>
<li><p>Post #8 specifically states
“American schools are the best in the world. If these World best schools were so great then why aren’t Americans applying in greater numbers and why do foreigners want to attend schools here.”
Leading me to believe that this poster does not believe that there are other high-quality universities outside of the USA. Conbining this ignorance with the dismissal of 95% of the world’s population and the fact that this poster identifies himself as a father leads me, as a student, to be very concerned about this individual’s actions and behavior, thus leading to my harsh post.</p></li>
<li><p>Most all of the 300,000 applicants for those spots are highly-qualified, just as many of Harvard’s applicants are highly-qualified, as well.</p></li>
<li><p>The reason why I went ballistic on post #8 is because it reminds me of a mentality many in my community and country share: “why care about the rest of the world when we are the best? We can blow them up at any time. Forget about diplomacy and let’s pull out the nukes.(genius who stated this then goes on to slinging a rock at a bird to show off his toughness)”</p></li>
</ol>
<p>This thought process in inhumane, irresponsible, and barbaric. As much as we don’t like to admit it, we are a world community. We have made strides to be more accepting, but those who think like WaitingDad do impede the process greatly. However, I still see some times, especially many times during post-9/11 America, where I see our nation following some of the same “shove it on them and they’ll like it” thought processes used by Detorit, and look what happened there. I mean, who would have thought Detroit would be where it is today 30 years ago? (sorry to go political again, too much city-data posting coming out)</p>
<p>If you look at the sections that rank the schools by subject area, UC Berkeley is ranked #2 in all of them except for Life Sciences and Biomedicine where it ranks #4.</p>
<p>4) social sciences
Berkeley #2
Stanford #3
Cambridge #5
Oxford #6
Yale #7
Duke #26</p>
<p>5) Arts and humanities
Berkeley #2
Stanford #8
Cambridge #4
Oxford #3
Yale #5
Duke #21</p>
<p>If you know simple math, you would conclude that Berkeley should be ranked very high, and higher than Oxford and Cambridge, because Berkeley is ahead of Oxford in all 5 fields, and ahead of Cambridge in 4 fields except life science. Stanford should be ranked higher than Yale and Duke, because Stanford is ahead of Duke in all 5 fields, and ahead of Yale in 4 fields except arts and humanities.</p>
<p>But sadly, the people who cranked out the rankings had no clue how to process data, they did some magic shuffling to push their beloved British universities in the top 5, shamefully pushed down the ranks of two of the world’s truely outstanding universities: Berkeley and Stanford.</p>
<p>Here are the end ranking results of these universities by THES:
Yale #2
Cambridge #3
Oxford #4
Duke #13
Stanford #17
Berkeley #36 .</p>
<p>I don’t know why US-NEWS used the THES ranking as their ranking. This just disgraces US-NEWS itself.</p>
<p>China is not a technologically advanced nation. The US is the most selective nation in the world for international applicants. Everyone wants a US education, a US citizenship, a US visa is highly regarded, and everyone wants to speak English. Only a handful of the India’s top universities can rival maybe the top 300-400 of America’s universities.</p>
<p>An emerging nation’s university system is no where on par with America’s university system… You are comparing India’s elite universities with the Ivy league? I loled.</p>
<p>Phead, I do not want a US passport. I actually had a greencard because at one point, I was considering living in the US. Two years ago, when I visited the US for a friend’s wedding, I turned my greencard in for termination. Many people would rather have a European Union citizenship, or a Canadian/Australian citizenship. However, I agree that for the masses of citizens in the developping world (countries like China, India, Pakistan etc…), the US is by far their preferred destination. However, the percentage of Western Europeans who wish to immigrate to the US is not much higher than the percentage of Americans who wish to immigrate to Western Europe.</p>
<p>I mentioned it when these rankings were posted earlier, but Times Higher Education is based in the UK which is why many universities from the UK sit highly.</p>
<p>It is quite difficult to grade all colleges as the grading system is different around the globe and so is how they measure success and “greatness”. While people disagree that a certain univ isn’t on or is on, please note that this always happens because we have a bias and have been brought up to think a certain way. If these rankings are through stats and scientific data and not subjective values I think I will accept this.
But cool to see Todai on the list.</p>
<p>Although it’s fair to say that many on the board probably have a bias towards American schools, the fact remains that based on a number of objective criteria, American schools remain the best on the planet. Based on research productivity, innovation, and funding, as well as selectivity, endowment size, quality of teaching, and a number of other criteria, schools like Imperial, UCL, and McGill simply don’t have any room on a Global Top 20, period. I’m sure fans of these schools will object, but the cold hard truth of reality is that the world’s top 20 universities are all (save perhaps for Oxbridge) in the United States.</p>
<p>jmleadpipe, I would have to agree but only to a certain extent.</p>
<p>What I’ve come to realize is quite a few of these top ranked international schools have much more rigorous undergrad preparation–especially in the sciences.</p>
<p>UofToronto and McGill are perfect examples. Neither school is hard to get into-- the Canadian school system doesn’t have SAT based tests so many schools just take in the kids with high grades. Problem is the programs can be very rigorous so the dropout rates are higher than normal.</p>
<p>While many US schools have issues with grade inflation, we (I go to UofToronto) deal with significant grade deflation–at least by US standards.</p>
<p>I mean I have friends who have gone to UCBerkeley, UC Davis, Columbia, and a handful of other top schools for undergrad programs ranging from Biosciences to engineering and the consensus is that the programs are just easier.</p>
<p>We have also seen US transfer students who have come to UofT and they’ve noted the significant increase in difficulty.</p>
<p>Our professors–most of whom have done their PhDs or Postdocs in top US schools–have also repeated this sentiment. The departments actually force them to give lower grades then they normally would.</p>
<p>So the US schools are more selective and have a lot more money. However, don’t assume that it always leads to more competent students. Many US schools take in top notch students because they are more selective at the undergrad level but they don’t necessarily produce the most competent students through rigorous programs.</p>
<p>I feel uncomfortable dealing with generalities but this has been echoed by students and proffs alike. Just something to consider.</p>
<p>You bring up very valid points and I would certainly agree that the level of difficulty at UofT is significantly higher than at many elite US schools. I think the issue with rankings is that you can never truly rank what makes a school good. If it’s only about the quality of the education than there isn’t really a good measure to show who’s better than who. That’s why you have to rely on things such as research productivity, endowment size, selectivity, and other such measures which I would argue have close to no relation to the quality of education.</p>
<p>That said, the measures used in the THES are completely ridiculous. A peer review based on a 1% response rate and a measure of the ratio of international students are like ranking schools based on the square footage of their parking lots. I think anyone in their right mind knows ANU, Imperial, UCL and McGill, although good schools, have no place in a Global top twenty ranking.</p>
<p>Rankings like this are quite useless to graduate students, who should be attending programs based upon the strength of their research program and the fit to the faculty mentors they will be working with (and who will be helping them find jobs in 5-8 years). For example, Stanford and Michigan are ranked at 17 and 18, but in my fiend (psychology) they are two of the top programs in the nation – both in the top 10 if not top 5. Caltech and MIT wouldn’t even register on a psychology student’s radar, for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>I agree with you saying that UCL, McGill have no place in the world top 20 but I believe Imperial certainly is world top 20. If you come to Asia, people who know Oxbridge know Imperial and it probably has the best engineering department in Europe. Please know what you are saying before you talk.</p>
wow…</p>