US colleges and Japanese Google

College Search & Selection
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<p>I tried to use my best knowledge on baidu.com and here are the results:</p>

<h1>of Links, School</h1>

<p>9,010,000 – Harvard</p>

<p>4,790,000 – Cambridge</p>

<p>3,700,000 – Yale
3,520,000 – Stanford
3,350,000 – Columbia
3,200,000 – Oxford
2,880,000 – MIT</p>

<p>1,900,000 – Chicago
1,590,000 – Princeton</p>

<p>940,000 – Cornell
805,000 – Duke
531,000 – Michigan
355,000 – Brown</p>

<p>Note: Cal is so hard to search since it is under many different names.</p>

<p>Others:
55,500,000 – Peking University
49,800,000 – Tsinghua University</p>

<p>21,600,000 – Avatar</p>

22

<p>I’ve always thought that among Ivies, Dartmouth has the greatest name cachet after HYP because it doesn’t share its name with a color, state or broadcasting system.</p>

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<p>^^Neither does Cornell.</p>

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<p>Yeah, what about Cornell?<br>
(It does sound a little like an eco-friendly laundry product, but that’s not the same as sharing a name.)</p>

25

<p>[Google-based</a> Ranking of Computer Science and Engineering Departments](<a href=“http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/rank.html]Google-based”>Google-based Ranking of Computer Science and Engineering Departments)</p>

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<p>Agreed. Maybe I’m being out of line, but this appears to me a rather brazen (not to mention transparent) attempt by the OP to make his university (Chicago) look better than it really is. (xiggi is right about him.)</p>

<p>I’ve lived in 3 countries and attended an American school abroad before I finished high school in the States. To suggest that Chicago is more internationally prestigious than Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, MIT, Princeton, etc. is absurd. </p>

<p>Overseas, anyone who’s heard of Chicago has heard of NYU. Most internationals (mistakenly) assume that since NYC > Chicago, NYU > UChicago.</p>

<p>Chicago is a great academic institution. Let’s leave it at that and not needlessly resort to making hyperbolic claims about its (international) prestige.</p>

27

<p>Even though Columbia is ranked highly, I have to say that this is a meaningless ranking, perhaps when using quotations you get some gauge of how likely the average web user is to have heard of the college, but mere fame does not equal prestige. A lot of people knowing about a university for bad reasons should bring down prestige while increasing your google hits. so fame not equal to prestige, and even fame (i.e. your google hits) probably comes from grad schools a lot more than undergrad schools.</p>

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<p>To answer a few questions:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>This is done in Japanese.</p></li>
<li><p>About why I didn’t just use Ranking 2. As in the US, sometimes universities are referred to without using the word “university”. For instance, when you reference Harvard, how often do you include the word “university” after it? The same applies in Japan, although in a somewhat similar context. Instead of saying ハーバード大学 (Ha-ba-do Daigaku), it is sometimes written ハーバード大 (Ha-ba-do Dai). As a result, it may sometimes be wise to just use Ranking 1 instead of Ranking 2. Since there was somewhat of a disparity between the two measures, I decided to average them. However, it is up to the individual user to decide which one is the more accurate, which is why I provided them both.</p></li>
<li><p>On the topic of accuracy of the ranking. I don’t think that this is necessarily a great measure of prestige. I do think it reflects the amount that such universities are mentioned on the web, which is often correlated with prestige.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>The reason that I think a search on Japanese Google is more telling than that of the American Google is that in Japan, these universities are not mentioned because of sports championships and other sources of “false” publicity that is present in many other countries.</p>

29

<p>wow… when are you people going to stop making horrible rankings… just stop. please. This does not measure anything other than how many hits each university has on a search engine. Let us say that a university has a really famous football team or a sports program or w e… and many hits are generated based on that… how does that equate to higher international prestige?? Why is this CC obsession with making arbitrary, irrelavant rankings?? Just stop.</p>

30

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<p>While I disagree that the OP’s experiment actually tests “international prestige,” I don’t understand why you keep trying to rain on everybody’s parade. Apparently, some people find these results interesting. If you don’t, feel free to ignore them. I usually do with things I deem “pointless.”</p>

31

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<p>Because for some people it’s not enough to get a great education. They also have a portion of their self worth and identity defined by the ranking of their school - a sort of famous brand label syndrome. Thus if their school is not ranked as highly as they would like, it’s easy to think up a different ranking method that moves their school up to where they feel better. </p>

<p>If we define the method narrowly or creatively enough, pretty much every college in America can be ranked in the top 10 of one hierachy or another. It’s Lake Wobegon around here.</p>

32

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<p>This is probably the wisest and most accurate line ever spoken on CC. I have been saying this FOREVER!!!</p>

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<p>Bingo! .</p>

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<p>My idea of international prestige actually is very close to my idea of international awareness, which is why I think these results are interesting. Not conclusive by any means, but interesting.</p>

<p>Alexandre: If you’re interested in the Michigan data point, Ranking 1 has Michigan theoretically at #9 with 254k hits. Ranking 2 has Michigan at #4 with 181k hits. This actually puts Michigan ahead of Yale and Princeton in the averaged rankings. (I will also say that I personally know that Michigan is rather prestigious in Japan, despite my lack of affiliations with the university.)</p>

<p>As for MIT, my rankings almost certainly under-ranked them. This is because my search was for the “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” instead of just MIT. It’s very hard to filter results that will be applicably just to Japanese sites, especially since many Japanese sites are written in English. As I searched for Harvard et al. in their Japanese script, it would be unfair to let MIT be just MIT. If you search for just MIT (in English script), MIT is clear #1 in both, and gets many, many more hits than even Harvard. I’m not sure how I should have taken this, so I just left it as “Massachusetts Institute of Technology”. However, the reader can interpret this however he/she likes. Based on my own experiences, I would put MIT either into Group 1 alone with Harvard or Group 2 with Columbia/Chicago/Stanford/Berkeley.</p>

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<p>Although as OP, I’m probably the target of this statement, I do agree. This was simply the best way for me personally to test international name recognition (outside of the international university rankings, of course). This ranking did somewhat confirm my own anecdotal experiences, which is why I thought it valid and interesting enough to post. I’m of the camp that believes education should be placed prior prestige at any cost; as such, I would attend Caltech over Harvard, despite the former not performing well in this study. As I’ve stated, I posted this because I thought it was interesting, not for making any assertions whatsoever.</p>

35

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<p>But that’s still meaningless, though. I don’t get why we’re supposed to care about impressing people whose opinions are based merely on familiarity and not on the actual dimensions of the quality of the school. It gets back to the Rolex thing. Most people are familiar with Rolex as a luxury / prestigious watch brand, but their familiarity with it, and their lack of familiarity with (say) Patek Philippe doesn’t make Patek Philippe any less prestigious. Just less known. Bentleys aren’t less prestigious just because the average person says “Mercedes” when asked for the most luxurious car they can name. And plenty of top schools aren’t one bit less prestigious just because your average Japanese person says “HYPSM” when asked for the best colleges in the US. Their opinion is based on NOTHING, just like the average person’s impressions of luxury cars and luxury watches is based on NOTHING.</p>

<p>Part of true prestige is the whole concept of NOT being known by the masses.</p>

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<p>The difference is that while Rolex may not be more prestigious than Patek Philippe or Mercedes may not be more prestigious than Bentley, HYPSM is really more prestigious than non-HYPSM (for both the “elite” and the “masses”).</p>

<p>With respect to university prestige, lay prestige maps accordingly well onto true prestige (at least for the most prestigious schools).</p>

37

<p>Well, then, leave it to yourself and your therapist to figure out why prestige is so important to you; when, as coureur noted upthread, why “a good education” isn’t enough without prestige, and when, as hawkette noted upthread, this whole prestige branding may be Oh So Very Critical for Upward Social Mobility in Asia and other places where University Admittance Determines Life Trajectory but isn’t necessarily the case here in the US.</p>

38

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<p>Please do not engage in ad hominem attacks; I don’t play that.</p>

<p>I also made no claims about whether or how prestige is “so important” to me. I acknowledge that it exists and that it played a role in my college decision. To deny it wholeheartedly is naive and disingenuous at best.</p>

39

<p>lol…it just happens China has a university called “Northwestern U” 西北大学. it also helps that Northwestern has a few estalished exchange programs in China. it has none in japan.</p>

<p>OP, your list has tons of flaws. schools that have established exchange programs in Japan are gonna have lots of hits simply because of the exchange programs. so there’s nothing “international” about your list. it’s Japanese at best and the title of this thread is very misleading. also as said before, washington university = university of washington in chinese and i bet that’s the case in japanese. even in english, google doesn’t differentiate washington and george washington…etc. university of chicago? so does that mean anything with the city of “chicago” and “university” is gonna be counted? also, i bet many of the hits for Ivy schools are simply about what “ivy” is (definition).</p>

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<p>The top 4 or 5 universities in China are certainly world-class. But the most consistently ranked number 1 university is Asia is the University of Tokyo, or commonly known in Japan as Todai. [The</a> University of Tokyo](<a href=“http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index_e.html]The”>http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index_e.html)</p>

<p>For the University of Tokyo, Stanford and UC Berkeley are defined “MOST PRESTIGIOUS UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD”. [3rd</a> UC Berkeley, Stanford (1/3) - Science Student Visit Abroad Program - sotory -School of Science, the University of Tokyo](<a href=“http://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/story/visit/en/03/01.html]3rd”>http://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/story/visit/en/03/01.html)</p>