World's Top 5?

Graduate School
1

<p>Without consulting any (dubiously composed) rankings, what would you say are the world's top 5 "best" universities? Obviously the word "best" is subjective, but I would be interested in your opinion. I have a feeling that No. 5 will be quite contested...</p>

2

<p>I certainly claim no authority, but I would go with (in no particular order) Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge.</p>

3

<p>Taking into consideration faculty and graduate program strength (i.e. this is not solely an undergraduate program ranking), my top five would be, in no particular order: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley and Cambridge.</p>

4

<p>Take into account of everything (undergrad, grad, research, professional schools, etc.)

  1. Harvard (When you include the professional schools, Harvard wins by an extremely large margin)
  2. Stanford
  3. Berkeley
  4. Cambridge
  5. UChicago</p>
5

<p>US News says that it’s:</p>

<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Cambridge</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>University College London</li>
<li>Imperial College</li>
<li>Oxford</li>
</ol>

<p>The editor must be British lol</p>

6

<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Cambridge</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>MIT</li>
</ol>

<p>@IvyPBear, good point. When ppl talk about the best in the world, you must take everything into consideration. (undergrad, grad, research, professional schools, etc.)</p>

<p>@pierre0913, I think you should consider all the world university rankings available at this moment (roughly 10 tables), not only one. Actually, USNEWS just simply cited the QS-rankings.</p>

7

<p>Here is one answer given by a chinese Nobel winner. He was asked to name the top 5, but he gave the top 7, because he was unable to differentiate these 7.

  1. Harvard
  2. Stanford
  3. Princeton
  4. Berkeley
  5. MIT
  6. Yale
  7. Cambridge</p>
8

<p>Harvard
Stanford
Berkeley
MIT
Cambridge
Oxford
Caltech
Princeton
Yale
Chicago
Columbia
Cornell</p>

9

<p>lol, just to boost my post count :b</p>

<ol>
<li>Cambridge</li>
<li>Oxford</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>University of Chicago :]</li>
<li>Charles University in Prague</li>
</ol>

10

<p>Is this for undergrad or grad? Lists would be very different. berkeley, for one, isn’t close to the top undergad.</p>

11

<p>^^^We’re talking about the top 5 universities on the planet. I wish CC posters would stop thinking a world class university is an undergraduate school whose accomplishments end after four years of training students to enter these types of institutions.</p>

12

<p>Harvard, Cambridge, Yale, Stanford, ?</p>

<p>IMO, a difficult question to answer and I would expect most answers found on here to probably be a little ethnocentric anyways.</p>

13

<p>My votes go to the following, in alphabetical order. Harvard and Stanford are the strongest American universities at the combined undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels, and Berkeley is an all-around powerhouse. Yale is too weak at the graduate level (relative to the others) to be included, and Princeton lacks professional programs. Universities like Cornell and Michigan, while having exceedingly few weaknesses and extreme breadth and depth, would not quite make the top 5 - though almost certainly the top 10 or 15.</p>

<p>Berkeley
Cambridge
Harvard
Oxford
Stanford</p>

<p>To sum up the posts so far:</p>

<ol>
<li>Cambridge: 10/10 posts (100%)
Harvard: 10/10 posts (100%)
---------------------------------------------</li>
</ol>

<h2>3. Stanford: 7/10 posts (70%)</h2>

<ol>
<li>Berkeley: 6/10 posts (60%)
Yale: 6/10 posts (60%)
--------------------------------------------</li>
</ol>

<h2>6. Oxford: 5/10 posts (50%)</h2>

<ol>
<li>Chicago: 3/10 posts (30%)
MIT: 3/10 posts (30%)
Princeton: 3/10 posts (30%)
----------------------------------------------</li>
<li>Caltech: 1/10 posts (10%)
Charles U: 1/10 posts (10%)
Columbia: 1/10 posts (10%)
Cornell: 1/10 posts (10%)
Imperial: 1/10 posts (10%)
UCL: 1/10 posts (10%)</li>
</ol>

<p>The disparity between Cambridge and Oxford seems inexplicable. Oxford and Cambridge are completely interchangeable in quality, so I can only assume there is a sort of mystique at work - Cambridge is less familiar to Americans and tends to admit fewer of them, so perhaps they assume it is superior.</p>

14

<p>World’s top 5 universities for academics and experience( in no particular order):
Academics-
Harvard
Princeton
Oxford
Cambridge
Stanford
Columbia</p>

<p>Experience-
Havard
University of Southern California
Northwestern
University of Iowa
University of North Carolina
Duke</p>

15

<p>haha I like the inclusion of Iowa :)</p>

16

<p>

</p>

<p>John Milton went to Cambridge and Erasmus taught there :b</p>

17

<p>These lists are too Anglo-centric. What about other European universities?</p>

18

<p>Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Stanford/P’ton/MIT, Oxford.</p>

<p>No specific order really. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses.</p>

19

<p>

</p>

<p>There aren’t any other European universities that deserve a spot in the top five.</p>

20

<p>

Oh, that’s a contest nobody would win. A lot of famous people attended and taught at Cambridge, and a lot of famous people attended and taught at Oxford. </p>

<p>If you’re going back that far, you may as well point out that Cambridge was founded by Oxford scholars. </p>

<p>(Continuing this chain of events, John Harvard was educated at Cambridge, and Yale was in turn founded by Harvard alumni.)</p>