<p>While looking for universities both world as well as course ranking wise , I came across many different sites which rank the universities but due to alot of variation in the rankings, which agency should we trust?
There is QS,Times Higher Edu, Shanghai and so many others.
Kindly help :)</p>
<p>Well, none of them. The “world rankings” rank universities based on research/PHD level work. They don’t apply for undergraduates (or very little).</p>
<p>Then what criteria would help us to distinguish between the universities?</p>
<p>Don’t rely on a rankings list or a single source of information to compare universities. Selecting schools and creating a list isn’t a project that can be completed in a day or two. It takes time and some in-depth research.</p>
<p>You can look at student body factors - like average high school GPA, average class rank, standardized test scores (to a point), diversity of the student body (racial, gender, geographic), etc. Usually schools have them on their website but you can also find them at BigFuture.CollegeBoard.com</p>
<p>IMO, what’s most important are university/college factors. What’s the faculty to student ratio? How big is the average class? How many students are there? What’s the library like in terms of holdings? What about classroom spaces and study spaces on campus? How many computer labs are there and does the university offer free or low-cost software that students need? What does the curriculum look like? Flip through a college bulletin/student handbook. See if you can find syllabi online for interesting classes (some professors post them online). Are the classes innovative with interesting assignments, or are they all lecture style with multiple choice tests?</p>
<p>Are there any really interesting curricular offerings, like a special minor or study abroad programs? Is there an honors program, if you want that? What does it offer, and how hard is it to get into? What’s the preprofessional advising like?</p>
<p>Check out the website for career services; even if you can’t access everything you should be able to see some things. What does their career services office look like? Check out the housing/res life websites and see what programs and offerings there are there.</p>
<p>Get a copy of the student newspaper. Most are online these days. Some student bodies also have blogs (like Columbia’s Bwog) and online professor rating systems (like Columbia’s CULPA). Columbia also maintains a Wiki, WikiCU. Check out stuff like that. What are the students complaining about? What are their important news items? How do they generally rate their professors? What do they think is important? Of course, these sources are written by small groups of students and don’t necessarily reflect every student, or even the student body as a whole, but I think you can get an idea from looking at these things. (For example, I think Bwog + WikiCU taken together gives you an idea of the offbeat, snarky sense of humor the Columbia student body tends to have. Personally, I like it.)</p>
<p>You don’t need rankings list to give you an exact reputational number of a school (which is imprecise anyway). But if you want to use rankings to get a general idea of a university that you’ve never heard of’s reputation, there are many college ranking lists. U.S. News & World Report is the most famous one. Forbes also has one (rather than two lists - one for universities and one for LACs - Forbes ranks them all together). Princeton Review has a list of the 378 best colleges and universities. Washington Monthly also has a ranking (very interesting and also has completely different criteria than the others).</p>
<p>UIUC maintains a list of rankings of undergraduate schools (<a href=“http://www.library.illinois.edu/sshel/specialcollections/rankings/rankgen.html”>About Us – Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library (SSHEL) – U of I Library). Everybody has a different formula and therefore different schools will come out in different orders. If you want to use rankings, I recommend comparing across at least 3 to get a sense of the general location of schools. For example, one thing I noticed was that Pomona was near the top of the list in nearly all of the rankings, even ones with very different methodologies. There are other schools like that, too.</p>
<p>LOL! I agree with ‘none of them’. Some are laughable if you are in the country where the rated schools are located. I honestly don’t know how you would ever get a world ranking of schools in one country against schools in another, National pride, political policy bias and more come into play. I guess I’d figure what countries interested me, then I would look at their INTERNAL listings (somewhat, those can be wonky too). I’d then compare them GENERALLY to the world rankings as a cross check, just to figure out what schools employers in other countries have heard of.</p>
<p>What MYOSO said is very true, also, look at WHAT they rank. If you are interested in ‘which will lead me to a job’, look at their employment history and lists that use that to rank. Most DO rate on PhD work, with the (in my view) ridiculous platitude that ‘the quality of PhD work makes for a better intellectual atmosphere for everyone’. If you are going UNDERGRAD I think that may be the opposite of the truth at times. OFTEN there is a tension between where the ‘emphasis’ and money, research opportnities and internships go. </p>
<p>As a prime example, look at UCSB. That is an UNDERGRADUATE focused school, with a relative lack of PhD students for its size and importance as a research university. As a result, more than 50% of its graduating seniors are working on original research work. Undergrads get the research and intern opportunities, routinely, and while TAs may run the sections for the largest classes, PROFESSORS, not graduate students, teach the classes, even the large ones. Compare this to Berkeley.</p>
<p>Schools that rank size of PhD programs as a big element, like US News, take major points off for that. But , as a comparison, one world listing that goes about half on how much an institution’s original research is cited in peer publications, ranks UCSB as number 2 in the world. But much as I love UCSB, I suspect if you planned to go get a job right out of college your prospective employer will know Berkeley better. (In California, the top employers recruit at both, however, the further you get from California, the more the importance of the name will weigh in.)</p>
<p>I have two sons. One may look for a job right out of college (he doesn’t know yet). The other has been planning to go to law school since kindergarten and sees the glut of attorneys on the market as just a challenge he will have to rise above. The first might do better to get his degree at Berkeley, all things being equal. The second will want to think about which will get him into a better graduate school, and also will have more luxury to think about sheer joy of the undergraduate experience. (UCSB 
)</p>
<p>You have to figure your own priorities.</p>
<p>Me,too. Imo, OP is done. Once you get a feel for which generally fall ahead of others, you look at the right match for you. Once you identify what makes the right match (c’mon, beyond prestige,) you expand the search.</p>