Sci-Fry

^ Oh, I see. It's just that I always thought that Oxford tended to be seen as the "better of the two", but maybe I was wrong. Perhaps it's just the fact that Oxford has a slight advantage in terms of international recognition (although I, myself generally regarded Cambridge as the better institution in terms of academics. But it's quite difficult to establish which is "the better one" because they've both got their stronger areas, and they're both excellent schools!).

I'm looking to study engineering at Cambridge. It'll be very competitive, but that's life...

lOngbOWmeN

haha i think Camb has a slightly higher profile in Asia due to its stronger sciences and the A-levels, while Oxford is more well-known in the US due to ihe rhodes scholarships and its arts-inclination (PPE, Literature etc.)

dconcerned

this thread has turned out to be the debate on the rankings. if we are to look into the rankings more objectively, let's consider the following.

1) all three rankings have different bases. usnews rankings are totally us based; only and exclusively us colleges. overall has been a pretty good yardstick for a couple of decades. thes rankings essentially based on peers reviews (overrepresented and thus reflecting assessments/perspectives by europe, australia and asia but underrepresented by us). sjtu creteria mainly focused on acdemadic output, papers/citations, nobel prizes etc.

they all have strengths and flaws. we should pick and choose the strengths and leave out the flaws when making decisions. if we want to consider the us colleges, use usnews as a starter but also alongside review thes and sjtu rankings to compare notes. for example, uchicago is consistently ranked top 10 in sjtu, about top 10 in thes, and coming up in top 10 by usnews. berkeley ranked very high in sjtu but around 20s in usnews (methodology of which favors ivies/east elite schools to a degree).

2) we need to consider different teaching/learning philosophies between us and uk more objectively. us emphasizes on giving students more liberal arts education, wanting students to explore more options/breadth and then to go to areas of concentration/majors so that students will graduate more well-rounded, left brain/right brain approach. uk goes to areas of concentration/majors from day one, emphasizes special fields and thus is less flexible in terms of course choices and switching majors.

3) since all rankings have flaws and are biased to a certain degree, more so in thes wolrds top universities rankings, while no rankings at all on outside us by usnews, we have to factor these into factor when comparing notes. if usnews starts world rankings, which i'm sure one day they will, all rankings then will be more comparable. in that case, world top universities rankings will be based from us, uk, and asia, which will give students more balanced views.

as for berkeley vs ucl, berkeley is more of an academic powerhouse in overall education in almost all fields, engineering, social sciences, business etc. ucl is well respected in uk, less known about the elites on worldwide scale. only top 4 from uk have among the world prestige status, say at top 20-30 worldwide i.e. oxbridge, followed by imperial and lse. i'm not saying uk schools are any less in academic strengths; colleges like ucl, edinburgh, warwick, bristol, and bath are definitely on par in my honest opinion with top 20-30 us schools but they're all underranked. 5-10 years will be different. don't forget rankings pretty much are influenced by and thus reflect the thoughts and viewpoints of the peers in the surveys during their college days. that's human nature.

so go ucl, if you like uk system, it's top 5 in uk, after which you may consider us for grad schools. if you like us educational philosophy, berkeley is a top school (which i really think is underrated by usnews bc of methodology and creteria). berkeley has flaws in terms of class size, students/faculty ratio, diversity (more than 90% in-state and more than 40% asians), weaker attention to undergrad. otherwise it should be in top 10 or at least top 15 in us.

ralphk

To qwerty2

As a student studying Chemistry at Oxford, I'd definitely say the reputation of Berkeley in chemical world is much better than UCL's, very much due to Berkeley's strength in Grad School. But I have to say, UK's undergrad is generally very good for those who want to SPECIALISE in the beginning of their college study. But the chemistry school in UCL is probably just outside of top five in UK. When I applied to chemistry schools in UK, I put oxbridge, ICL, bristol over UCL. So in your case I would put Berkeley over UCL if I were in your situation.