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The best universities in the world

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Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
Uh, something ain't right.
There's no possible way my university (Sapienza, Rome) is #92, while my first choice that i failed to get in (Normale di Pisa) is #360something.
Seems pretty biased towards big universities.
 

Heartfyre

Member
Depending on methodology, I've noticed my university differs a fair bit on different lists. It's 111 on this list, but I've seen it go as high as 70 on others such as the Times Higher Education rankings.
 

spekkeh

Banned
Some 50% of the score is awarded to who received a small number of prizes favoring Americans and Japanese in engineering fields. And another 25% to who supplied CEOs in the Forbes 2000, favoring old money institutions.
OK.
The education ranking especially is complete bunk.

I'll stick to ARWU and Times, for all the faults they have.
 

Rush_Khan

Member
Take out all the USA unis and my uni (35) is pretty high. Don't know how UCL is better than it, though. Also can't find LSE anywhere, thought that was a good uni.
 

nOoblet16

Member
201

These rankings are always biased towards big names and US universities and they always will be, non US/UK universities can be just as good. It's like they are prestigious because they have been prestigious....and as such will be prestigious compared to others.
 

Africanus

Member
#794.
Not bad! Graduating 2 years early and being done with med school for a fraction of the cost is worth it. Even considering that I got into number 6.
 

iPorygon

Member
86 Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
204 University of Georgia, USA
NixZyLC.gif
 

Zackat

Member
201

These rankings are always biased towards big names and US universities and they always will be, non US/UK universities can be just as good. It's like they are prestigious because they have been prestigious....and as such will be prestigious compared to others.
Yeah it seems to heavily favor schools that do lots of research stuff, so bigger schools will typically have that.
 
People who say the list is biased towards US/UK universities, do you honestly think the top 10 would change significantly given any other metric? Those universities (well the top 5 for sure) will continue being the most prestigious in the world
 
Undergrad school is unranked.
Graduate school is a top 40.
Post-doc school is a top 20.

STARTED FROM THE BOTTOM NOW WE HERE!

Time to get that professorship at a top 10 school, yeah?

I am hopefully on a similar trajectory. My undergrad is unranked. My graduate is 52. I am going to do another graduate before I do my PhD, though.
 

Kieli

Member
All those brains, yet still over 40% of the population is seemingly willing to vote for Trump to be commander-in-chief. It balances out nicely.

That said, i'm actually going to spend 6 months at Harvard for research relatively soon and i'm pretty excited to be at such a world-class institution.

America should split into two countries. The first one keeps all the bohemian artists, doctors, engineers, programmers, and highly educated.

The second one gets to keep whatever mutates out of the swamps of the South.
 

SephiZack

Member
Uh, something ain't right.
There's no possible way my university (Sapienza, Rome) is #92, while my first choice that i failed to get in (Normale di Pisa) is #360something.
Seems pretty biased towards big universities.

As an Italian, I was also surprised of those rankings; I think Normale di Pisa is considered very prestigious in pretty much all of Italy (I come from Padova) but the fact that it admits only a very small number of students every year makes it uncompetitive in these kind of lists
 

shintoki

sparkle this bitch
Uh, something ain't right.
There's no possible way my university (Sapienza, Rome) is #92, while my first choice that i failed to get in (Normale di Pisa) is #360something.
Seems pretty biased towards big universities.


One of the biggest factors are prestige and networking. Bigger schools are typically much strong at this, while smaller ones are typically known for being very good in one or two fields.
 

Kieli

Member
201

These rankings are always biased towards big names and US universities and they always will be, non US/UK universities can be just as good. It's like they are prestigious because they have been prestigious....and as such will be prestigious compared to others.

And being prestigious attracts world class students, world class researchers, and world class funds.
 
That site looks so sketch. Looks so unfinished with a basic bootstrap website theme lol

My school is in the top 200 so woo hoo. Surprised none of the CUNY schools ranked.
 

numble

Member
One of the biggest factors are prestige and networking. Bigger schools are typically much strong at this, while smaller ones are typically known for being very good in one or two fields.
Bigger schools are typically very weak at networking. They just have a very huge net. The top 12 here are pretty small compared to the next 12. My back of the envelope guess is that 13-24 have 2-3x the student population of 1-12.
 
People who say the list is biased towards US/UK universities, do you honestly think the top 10 would change significantly given any other metric? Those universities (well the top 5 for sure) will continue being the most prestigious in the world

I don't know if its a US/UK bias per se, but its biased towards the very elite. Unless Elon Musk or equally successful graduated from your school, your school is shit. Seems like coat-tails riding to me. How much credit can the school take for those people's success?
 
Bigger schools are typically very weak at networking. They just have a very huge net. The top 12 here are pretty small compared to the next 12. My back of the envelope guess is that 13-24 have 2-3x the student population of 1-12.

Networking isn't just about numbers, it's about useful numbers. Simply having a larger student body doesn't necessarily mean the networking opportunities are better if a lot of the people in those networks aren't in meaningful positions. For instance knowing a single person in a senior level position at a company is probably more useful than knowing dozens in low level positions

I don't know if its a US/UK bias per se, but its biased towards the very elite. Unless Elon Musk or equally prolific graduated from your school, your school is shit. Seems like coat-tails riding to me. How much credit can the school take for those people's success?

Well it's correlation, right? You question how much credit the school can take, but if there seems to be a strong correlation between school and accomplishments, then the school must be doing something or at least having some level of influence. I think people read these lists the wrong way. It's not "These are the only schools you can go to be successful", it's more "These are schools strong associated with success"
 

Nesotenso

Member
tbh I think most of the US schools in the top 100 would be in the upper half of most lists, no matter what the criteria.
 

numble

Member
Networking isn't just about numbers, it's about useful numbers. Simply having a larger student body doesn't necessarily mean the networking opportunities are better if a lot of the people in those networks aren't in meaningful positions. For instance knowing a single person in a senior level position at a company is probably more useful than knowing dozens in low level positions
That's what I'm saying?
 
Hooray, my university's top 25 material!

That'll give me some comfort when all my loans start coming due and I begin praying I win the lottery.
 
Well it's correlation, right? You question how much credit the school can take, but if there seems to be a strong correlation between school and accomplishments, then the school must be doing something or at least having some level of influence. I think people read these lists the wrong way. It's not "These are the only schools you can go to be successful", it's more "These are schools strong associated with success"

That correlation is superficial. Schools fall over each other to convince high potentials to choose to enrol with them. They offer free tution, special treatment, gifts, etc. Those high potential individuals are actually doing more for the school than the school is doing for them. Its coattail riding. A more productive study would have looked at a greater population of people coming out of those schools and the sort of success those people would have been able to achieve.
 

MMarston

Was getting caught part of your plan?
57 University of British Columbia, Canada

Would've been higher if they weren't being complete asshats in terms of prioritizing reputation over education these days.
 

Breakage

Member
I'm surprised that there are only 7 UK universities in the top 100. I was under the impression that many foreign students come to the UK because it is home to a significant amount of world renowned higher education institutions.
 

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
I'm surprised that there are only 7 UK universities in the top 100. I was under the impression that many foreign students come to the UK because it is home to a significant amount of world renowned higher education institutions.

What other major Uk schools does it have? I've only heard of half of them, myself.
 
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