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The best universities in the world

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It seems like non-research colleges like liberal arts colleges (which are primarily teaching colleges) are at a disadvantage based on the metrics by which this list uses. The list puts on an emphasis on faculty publication and research rate. .


They're at a huge disadvantage because the Universities themselves don't make research money and their graduates aren't exactly killing it in the job market.
 

eot

Banned
There are some weird things on the list (the high ranking of UCSF, which is an extremely good medical school and not much else; Cambridge above Oxford; the extremely low ranking of National University of Singapore; Cornell ranked a little too high; Duke a little low, Sciences Pol not being one of the French schools represented, etc.) that I think are a product of the rankings incentivizing CEOs and Engineers who patent over other things, but generally this list is somewhat consistent with other lists.

I think this kind of thing also makes people super defensive about the school they're at, as evidenced from the sour grapes in the thread. Hahaha.

63/1000 is extremely low?
 

sikkinixx

Member
Harvard's endowment is like $40 billion that it makes money off of tax free every year.

with $40B in the back they SHOULD be the best fucking University in the world. They should give all the students Teslas too for kicks.
 

Kieli

Member
It seems like non-research colleges like liberal arts colleges (which are primarily teaching colleges) are at a disadvantage based on the metrics by which this list uses. The list puts on an emphasis on faculty publication and research rate.

I found, in my experience as an undergraduate at a large research oriented university, that there were some professors with impressive research credentials who absolutely sucked at the job of teaching undergrads - because they were so much more concerned with writing their next paper than teaching biology 101.

edit:

also this list is way more relevant for these university's graduate programs than they are for gauging quality of undergraduate education.

MacLean's does a ranking of Canadian universities and also includes a separate ranking for quality of teaching for undergraduates.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
63/1000 is extremely low?

NUS is easily a top 10 university worldwide across all fields. So yes, 63rd is low -- the same way if Harvard had been 25th I'd be rolling my eyes at how low it was.

Hey now, don't diss UCSF's schools of pharmacy, nursing and dentistry.

I was honestly grouping them all with medicine -- neuroscience is pretty good at UCSF too and again kinda in the same orbit. No hate on UCSF!
 

trixx

Member
Fck uoft

Nah U of T is pretty good. Pretty much it is what you make of it. Just my personal experience hasn't been the greatest but objectively speaking it's probably one of the best in the world.
 
Too bad I wasn't able to attend UC Santa Barbara even though I got accepted. I would have been in a school in the top 100. :p

Prestige only goes so far though. I know of one who graduated from a school not even in the top 1000 and is making almost twice as much as someone who graduated from Berkeley in the same majors, and they were equally active in clubs and groups.

I'm okay at where I'm attending....though it's too hot.
 

numble

Member
They're very useful for "kids" deciding what university to go to. It's not really obvious whether Durham or Huddersfield is a better university just from reading the prospectus and going to open days. It takes, I think, years of navigating through the world of academia and then work to truly have a grasp on what universities are good and what ones aren't, and the Times and Guardian et al lists help make sure kids aren't making dumb mistakes out of ignorance (but, rather, for other reasons!)
I don't think a ranking that includes graduate school output is very useful for someone choosing an undergraduate school. Going to Yale or Princeton for undergraduate school is often definitely better for an undergraduate than going to UC Berkeley, and the selectivity of those schools reflect that. Berkeley should have a higher number of output given its size--there are 28000 undergraduate students at Berkeley compared to Yale's 5500.
 
I am actually surprised at how high NYU is. I figured we'd be towards the bottom of the 100s, but Stern, Tisch, and Gallatin are really saving our ass.
 

numble

Member
What are you talking about? So many people go to the US to study medicine just for the prestige.

Are you sure that most American medical degrees are more powerful than any European medical degree? You know that the medical schools at Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial College, Karolinska, King's College, Edinburgh, Erasmus, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, etc. are considered to be better than most American medical schools, right?
 

The Lamp

Member
Are you sure that most American medical degrees are more powerful than any European medical degree? You know that the medical schools at Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial College, Karolinska, King's College, Edinburgh, Erasmus, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, etc. are considered to be better than most American medical schools, right?

Where are the data for this conversation? I'm tired of discussing over assumptions.
 

Kieli

Member
Are you sure that most American medical degrees are more powerful than any European medical degree? You know that the medical schools at Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial College, Karolinska, King's College, Edinburgh, Erasmus, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, etc. are considered to be better than most American medical schools, right?

What?....

This is the first time I've heard this. Havard, John Hopkins, and Washington were always the holy trinity of medicine.

You got into any one of these three, and the world was your oyster.
 

numble

Member
Where are the data for this conversation? I'm tired of discussing over assumptions.

Yes, where is the data that over 50% of American medical schools (where most American medical degrees come from) is better than any European medical school.

Honestly, look at any global ranking of medical schools and you can easily defeat your absurd claim that "there's always the fact the diploma is not as powerful as most American diplomas".

What?....

This is the first time I've heard this. Havard, John Hopkins, and Washington were always the holy trinity of medicine.

You got into any one of these three, and the world was your oyster.

His claim is about most American schools, not the top American schools. If you are claiming that most American medical degrees are from Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Washington, then you may be right.
 
My university is ranked 227 out of 1,000

1470368633-harvard.png
 
What are you talking about? So many people go to the US to study medicine just for the prestige.
Uh, are you talking about obtaining an M.D. degree, or residency/fellowship? I somehow doubt bright people from Europe are traveling overseas just to obtain an M.D. when they could easily get the equivalent at home for cheaper. It makes sense to travel to the U.S. to work at a fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering or MD Anderson. It doesn't make sense to pay for Yale School of Medicine when getting a degree from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden is just as good.

You are overestimating the influence of a medical school pedigree, when the quality of postgraduate residency/fellowship is far more important. Where you graduated from matters much less than you think in terms of getting a competitive residency spot.



And Washington? Wha? Even if you're referring to WashU in St. Louis, I wouldn't equate it to "world is your oyster." Numbers from standardized tests and experience from sub-internships matter much more. Hell, I wouldn't even extend that claim to a Harvard Medical School graduate. Still gotta prove yourself taking the exact same test every other American allopathic medical student takes.
 
I got accepted to UW-Madison but chose not to go. Also, WTF at UW-Milwaukee being at 498, I didn't expect any other UW schools to be on the list.
 
Yes, where is the data that over 50% of American medical schools (where most American medical degrees come from) is better than any European medical school.

Honestly, look at any global ranking of medical schools and you can easily defeat your absurd claim that "there's always the fact the diploma is not as powerful as most American diplomas".



His claim is about most American schools, not the top American schools. If you are claiming that most American medical degrees are from Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Washington, then you may be right.
I looked at three reputable rankings of medical schools and the USA dominates the lists. Not just in top 10 but in terms of depth as well.
 

numble

Member
I looked at three reputable rankings of medical schools and the USA dominates the lists. Not just in top 10 but in terms of depth as well.

Which rankings? I guarantee you will have a hard time finding that most American degrees are more powerful than any European degree.
 
Those rankings in no way invalidate numble's disagreeing with "that over 50% of American medical schools (where most American medical degrees come from) is better than any European medical school."

I have no idea why a western European would want to go to the average American medical school when they could go to one in their own home country for far cheaper (by, um, about $100,000) and graduate at an earlier age.
 
Google search results differ depending on the user.

Nevertheless, the top result for me shows 26% of the top 50 schools in Europe, 56% of the top 50 schools are not in the US.
My top results is this site
http://www.topuniversities.com/univ...ity-subject-rankings/top-medical-schools-2016

USA has 6 of the top 10 and 32% of the top 50. You are right in that some European schools are better than most (but not all) American schools. That said, these rankings still show that the USA has greater quality depth in its medical schools vs. Europe.
 

The Lamp

Member
Yes, where is the data that over 50% of American medical schools (where most American medical degrees come from) is better than any European medical school.

Honestly, look at any global ranking of medical schools and you can easily defeat your absurd claim that "there's always the fact the diploma is not as powerful as most American diplomas".

I corrected the claim to "some" which you didn't read.

And how many countries have the combined quantity and quality of schools that can compare to America? We dominate that list. Hell, mine is in the top 100 and its just a Texas state school.
 

Dies Iræ

Member
Not when you see lists of years past when University of Toronto was top 18. This is the higest (worst) I've ever seen. Lists are stupid though. I'd say the same if they were ranked #1.

But least we can laugh at our McGill rivals. They fell hard.

Worst ever? UofT climbed 2 spots in the CWUR ranking from 2015 (when it was #32).

UofT ranks 19th globally in THE and it ranks 16th globally in US NEWS. It ranks 11th globally in the THE research category. It ranks 25th globally in Jiao Tong rankings.

IMO the CWUR rankings have a strong American bias. The THE rankings of Canadian universities reflect my own experiences with them (with McGill falling the hardest, as it should).
 
oh, my university is on there (90's range). Neat.

But I feel that citations, publications, and patents should definitely not be included as a measure of quality of the education, since those don't actually relate to each other. Most of the people you have read about in lectures and books tend to be people in academics or just outside of it with only a minor amount of publications compared to current expectations.
To put it bluntly: a citation machine-man tends to be intellectually arid and not a source for creative new theory (or data, to reframe existing ones) or pushing boundaries.

It's also way too easy to publish articles that are actually completely meaningless because they have no theory in them. Say, "the correlation between posting on neogaf and being a shitheel". You get an answer alright, but it's without a process of expected explanations / predictions / hypothesis (theory), which is therefore junk information. It tells you nothing. Yet these "bullshit publications" (my words, not someone else's) do count towards credibility.
This is particularly heavy towards US institutions, meaning that the over-representation of US universities in the top 20-30 is likely a result of a biased model, not a more realistic, human, measure of quality.

"Man is the measure of all things", not an algorithm. Ironically I have Colossus (1970) running in a different window while typing this. Feels meta.
 

spekkeh

Banned
As I said, about 50% of this ranking is based on awards and prizes received, and is furthermore heavily slanted towards American prizes. Working towards winning awards and medals is something that is ingrained in US and Chinese (as well as a few other Asian universities), but less so in other parts of the world, where other factors like doing research are deemed more important. Another 25% is based on the Forbes 2000 list, further favoring large countries like US and China.

That there are even non US universities on this list is a goddamn miracle.

This list has very little standing among researchers.

Not that others don't have their problems; ARWU is notoriously slanted towards big universities and hard sciences, THE has some indicators like percentage of international students that now lead to weird positions. But these are generally considered more authoritative, with QS trailing a bit further behind. Noone talks about CWUR frankly.
 
His claim is about most American schools, not the top American schools. If you are claiming that most American medical degrees are from Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Washington, then you may be right.

No it wasn't. You were the one who used "most"

As I said, about 50% of this ranking is based on awards and prizes received, and is furthermore heavily slanted towards American prizes. Working towards winning awards and medals is something that is ingrained in US and Chinese (as well as a few other Asian universities), but less so in other parts of the world, where other factors like doing research are deemed more important. Another 25% is based on the Forbes 2000 list, further favoring large countries like US and China.

That there are even non US universities on this list is a goddamn miracle.

This list has very little standing among researchers.

Not that others don't have their problems; ARWU is notoriously slanted towards big universities and hard sciences, THE has some indicators like percentage of international students that now lead to weird positions. But these are generally considered more authoritative, with QS trailing a bit further behind. Noone talks about CWUR frankly.

How are these American slanted just because American (and Chinese) schools dominate in those categories? There's nothing inherent to them that is biased. "Working towards winning awards and medals is something that is ingrained in US and Chinese (as well as a few other Asian universities)"? That sounds like something you literally made up to justify the perceived slant, because I can assure you, the top universities in the US are more focused on research, which you claim is more of a European focus.
 
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