Does Columbia have an international reputation that matches that of the top three Ivies? Is it recognized worldwide? Has anyone been out of the country and recieved an opinion about the school?
I don't think it quite matches the other three ivies in name recognition (cue to someone posting 'stats and rankings' ) but it's very high up there. It's the ivy college in New York city which gives it a certain level of cachet. It's very well known in Canada and Australia. Those two I can attest personally.
I am pretty sure that its recognized considering its location and the fact that a lot of celebrities are alumni. It's also Spiderman's alma matter, only I don't know if they mention it much in the movies.
Yeah I'm pretty sure Columbia is a world-famous University. There may be a few times where its actually mixed up with University of British-Columbia in Canada but tehaverage person would have heard of Columbia.
Heres a commercial for your convenience. Notice the first building in the commerical.
Columbia is extremely well recognised all over the world. It may not have the same ring of HYP, but consider this: would you want to work in a firm that hasn't heard of Columbia? One would need to be really closed minded and ignorant not to have even heard the name.
well it's down to either Dartmouth or Columbia for MA...
Since both of the programs I was accepted into aren't stellar, I was going to base my decision on pure name recognition and opportunities afforded (alumni networks, internships, student organizations).
Dartmouth's grad school is pretty small that I suppose I would benefit from the good opportunities within the school, i.e. student groups, joining the council, etc.
With Columbia it just seems like the networking and getting to know others would be a little tougher and overly competitive. But, Columbia is still in NYC.
Which school is more recognized internationally and has a better rep prestige wise?
Last edited by Texassoccer84; 06-19-2008 at 09:24 PM.
Columbia ranks below only Harvard and maybe Stanford in international name recognition. It is easily as well known as Yale and Princeton abroad. In Japan, where I have the most international experience, Columbia is a paramount name.
Obviously nobody is an expert in the field of international university prestige, but from my experience abroad (mainly in Australia where I lived for a while), Columbia ranks 4th among the Ivies in terms of prestige. Interestingly, most of the Australians never brought up anything to do with American schools...it was the foreign students who seemed to care the most (and the Indian students particularly stood out). Going to HYP was the ultimate goal of most...second to that was going to an "Ivy." Now beyond HYP, Columbia was the only other Ivy that people seemed to know was an Ivy. Dartmouth wasn't even on the radar...nor was Brown. Cornell and Penn were iffy. Berkeley and Stanford were thought to be ivies by many and other top notch schools like Duke and UChicago were generally unknown.
This is a very simple question to answer. In the rest of the world, people look up the Shanghai rankings and Columbia is 7th or so. And 6th in the Americas. Even Princeton is not uniformly well known. It goes like this:
Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Yale, Columbia, Cornell. The latter because its hotel management school created a world wide reputation for its grads who managed hotels around the world, also its agricultural school which educated a no of African and Asian bureaucrats.
Columbia is actually ranked 9th in American rankings and who in the world said Shanghai's rankings count? Besides, I hardly believe MIT & Caltech is recognized world-wide.
no, as ramaswami said, columbia is ranked 7th in the world and 6th in the americas by the shanghai rankings,,, it's ranked 9th in the USNWR national university rankings, which only ranks undergraduate education. USNWR has grad school rankings but only for each discipline (it does not have a comprehensive ranking of the whole institutions)
and maybe some people don't care about university rankings, but unfortunately most people do, and the shanghai rankings is the most widely used world rankings, so....
and i'm not sure about caltech, but MIT IS one of the most well-known universities in the world,, i'm a foreigner and have lived outside the US all my life so i can tell you that
i'd say harvard is THE most prestigious school that the most number of people know about, and after harvard it'd be something like stanford, MIT, columbia, berkeley, yale, cornell..... and of course this would also completely depend on where you are - this is only a rough list from the point of view of where i come from - because, obviously, the university to which your country sends the most students will be more well-known in your country in general...... oh and you might throw in cambridge and oxford somewhere in that list.
princeton is surprisingly not as "prestigious" as some might think, but that may be because princeton does not have law/med/business schools. university of chicago, duke, and also northwestern, as CWalker said, are among the most underrated universities outside the US
) but it's very high up there. It's the ivy college in New York city which gives it a certain level of cachet. It's very well known in Canada and Australia. Those two I can attest personally.
