ycang

Correction: USC has THE LARGEST international student population of any US university, for the sixth year running.

International Students in the USA

International students choosing to study in the US | Worldwide | EducationGuardian.co.uk

lOngbOWmeN

this thread is becoming pointless....first soas, then nottingham, what next? community colleges? zZz

dconcerned

iongbowmen: your quote "this thread is becoming pointless....first soas, then nottingham, what next? community colleges? zzz"

u nottingham is one of the leading research unis in uk and considered one of the good schools for students seeking higher education in uk. ranked #14 by times good uni guide 2007. and according to thes, nottingham came #85 in top 200 world rankings and ranked #81 in social sciences.

now if this is not enough, iongbowmen, let's take a look at another supposedly more neutral source for world rankings, shanghai jiao tong. here nottingham is world ranked (2007) at #81 overall, #24 in europe and #9 in uk. and now according to the latest 2008 (just released in feb 08) world rankings by academic fields, nottingham this year ranked at #29 in clinical medicine & phamarcy, #50 in life/agricultural sciences and top 100 in social sciences. now as far as world rankings are concerned, thes and sjtu are considered the benchmark, although still debateable and will continue to be so for years to come. but they're really the only two key sources ppl refer to when talking world rankings.

another one you mentioned, the school of oriental and african studies (soas), has long been known for its excellent departments/programs in int'l studies, non-european languages, offering majors in history, economics and law. part of the uni of london, it's the uk's national center for the study of asia, africa and the middle east. ranked #18 by times good university guide 2007 for top uk schools. as for world rankings by thes, top at #70 overall and #30 in arts n humanities.

now in all fairness, i don't think soas and nottingham educational values are pointless at all. they deserve at least some consideration to be candidates for good schools in uk together with those in us. okay, if we're talking about top 10-20, then they shouldn't be included, but here we're talking a possible list of 30-50 schools that would sufficiently provide as a broader, comprehensive list. i'm not sure you've done enough research, other than cutting here and pasting there, as far as the schools you mentioned are concerned.

most of the cc boards have maybe about 5%-10% replies compared to total number of views. this is bc a great majority of cc participants simply want to click in and just to see anything worth reading, or to learn something new, or have their questions answered by reading the postings. although they might choose not to be active participants, they're nevertheless the silent majority.

and for that, they deserve respect too, by not having to read something biased, impartial, bashful, and pointless!!!

Sci-Fry

Yes, but that doesn't change the overall academic quality of those institutions.

I fear that this thread is going to have a lot of bias towards US universities simply because people don't know much more than Cambridge, Oxford, ICL and LSE in the UK.

The majority of people I know only know Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford, despite there being many other universities with equally brilliant academics.

dconcerned

sci-fry: i agree. generally speaking uk cambridge/oxford/icl/lse are considered the most prestigious "top tier" and in a sense comparable to people consider hypsm+caltech as "top tier" in the us. even though top students would apply to these schools, either us or uk, as their "dreams", they would still consider other schools like ucl, edinburgh, bristol (the most popular uni oxbridge applicants would go to), warwick (as tony blair once proudly presented to bill clinton during his visit to uk as the british school of the future, excellent programs in business and economics almost on par with lse, but not quite), kcl, soas and so on.

mild bias, at least a polite one, is perfectly okay. we're all are to a certain degree. but not those who are strongly/unfairly bashful and trying to be intimidating on purpose, i repeat on purpose, while they don't know enough or haven't done their homework. we should give some respect for those silent majority.

lOngbOWmeN

dconcerned, allow me to elucidate my point

1)you're look for a list of top 50 UK/US unis....if you look at it from a rankings point of view, nottingham/soas/etc. wont make it in, which you yourself duly pointed out

2)unless you want an equal number of US and UK unis (which imo means including some relatively less qualified UK unis in the list), nottingham/soas/etc. wont qualify either....the UK has 120+ unis, while the US has more than 3000, 14/120 (nottingham) is top 11% in the UK, while any top 50 US colleges would be the top 0.01% in the US....while this is by no means indicative of prestige and quality (becoz by this method oxbridge would be excluded, which is ludicrous), it does follow logically that there will be fewer UK unis in the list, because UK has less unis and by extension less top unis

3)while i agree with you that SOAS/Nottingham/etc. should and will be considered by some students and we should respect that, herein lies the contradiction....you are looking for a list of Top unis strictly, then we shouldnt include SOAS/Nottingham/etc., but if you are looking for a list of top unis that students should consider, different students consider different unis (i.e. a top student would only consider top-tier schools, while a good student would consider both top-tier and middle-tier, and a poor student considers only the middle-tier and lower-tier), essentially voiding the purpose of your generic list

dconcerned

iongbowmen: okay, if you want to clear the air.

1) as i said, if you look at the top 4-5 uk schools i.e. cambridge, oxford, imperial, lse, and may be ucl, they can be comparable to the top 10 or 15 in the us. now i don't want to compare heads-on, i'm talking that they both can be considered, by most qualified educators and such, the top tier or tier#1 in their own country.

2) second tier in uk or the next five in top 10 (edinburgh, bristol, warwick, manchester, nottingham or whatever in that leaque) should be in the same second tier in us for the next 11th-20th or 15th-25th rankings on uswr. again i don't want to go into specifics, it's gonna be too lengthy and taking too much time.

so overall speaking, the top 10 uk schools are generally regarded as reasonably comparable, give or take, to the top 20-25, maybe 30 at most with the elites on uswr rankings.

now the rest of the top 120 uk schools may be categolized as in the same group with all 300-400 good schools in us, depending on the types of schools, depts/programs etc. etc. some will say too many, some can say too little, very debateable. i don't know enough and i guess you don't either, judging from you have commented so far. but give or take, as a whole they can be grouped together. you can always break them down further into third tier, fourth tier, fifth tier to do a heads-on comparison. but that's not the motive of this thread. no matter what and how you classify, they're gonna result in more heated debates and conflicting opinions.

this thread does not seek for direct comparisons, or detailed rankings per se. it serves as a convinient tool as the first step for int'l students in particular to go on with their college application process, probing into details of each and every individual schools they're interested in along the way, and ultimately come up with two lists of their own college choices for final decision.

now, when you were implying that the top 120 uk schools should be compared to 3,000 something unis in the us, you really went over the board. do you know that outside the 400-500 or so schools in the us and even this number is still debateable, the rest are pretty much regional i.e. state or even local. nothing wrong about that. each and every single college serves their own target group and community. but to say top 120 uk schools, all considered research schools internationally renowned, at least in europe or in asia or elsewhere, is really an insult on those who highly value higher education and particularly those who were educated or are attending or thinking about going to uk.

i only hope that you'd be more careful and constructive when making criticism as you're also of high caliber in your own way.

lOngbOWmeN

^ a laundry list, thats all you need to say....a laundry list is what you're looking for

and whats with the top (<---you conveniently added this term yourself) 120 uk unis comparing to the 3000 unis in the us? uk has 120+ unis in total....and besides my point was, i disagree with the inclusion of so many uk unis (5-6 shud suffice) in a list of 30, firstly because outside of the top 5, non of these unis have any international prestige or clout to speak of, and secondly these unis do not represent the crem de la crem of the system (% wise)

dconcerned

you don't get it. for one, compare the number of us population in uk vs in us. when you have a family of 3-4 you may need a 3-4 br home, you don't need 15-20 br house. and on top of that, us schools in great number have student pop of 1,000 plus minus. that's one major reason why number of us schools is way out of proportion when compared to uk number.

laundry list? maybe there's one for those who need a clean-up.

lOngbOWmeN

^ you still don't get it, yes many of these 3000 US colleges are small LACs/specialised colleges compared to the mostly huge comprehensives of the UK....but lets compare pop size, US has 5x the population of UK, so in terms of the quality of the student body, selectivity, quality of the academic staff etc., i would say the top 6-7 UK unis are comparable to the top 20-30 US unis, generally speaking (and we're not even talking about funding, which significantly tilts the playing field in the favour of US unis)

at the rate you're going, its a laundry list no doubt....and since you're the OP, if you're ok with it, then i'm fine too =)

dconcerned

how much longer do you want to drag on with all this? you raised the point comparing 120 top uk schools as opposed to 3000 something us colleges. that's why i had to bring to your attention, in case you forgot, that a couple of thousands or so are small schools, limited in funding (compared to big elite schools) like you said, smaller list of depts/programs, mainly serving state/local ppl, no real research facilities etc. etc. but don't get me wrong, many many of them are real fine schools, just serving different goals and ppl.

but you can't compare 120 uk schools, top internationally renowned, and a great majority of them are in top 500 world schools, with 3000 colleges in us. and draw a conclusion that nottingham being #14 is top 11% of uk top schools while top 50 us colleges would be only less than 1 percent; therefore us much much better.

if that's your logic, try comparing students of 10 thousands or so at beijing univ out of 1.3 billions in china, with those, say at harvard, more or less the same student pop. and draw a conclusion that top students attending bejing u or tsinghua u in china represent even a smaller fraction of a percentage, out of populationwise or number of schools; and therefore, beijing u students are even topper-than-top class of students compared to harvard or mit. that would be totally silly and idiotic.

now if you want to compare and try to prove that overall 120 top us colleges are better than 120 top uk schools, you needn't to bc i know it and i've said that already. again, the thread was never intended to do anything like that.

to tell you the truth, the list so far itself is not so much of a laundry list at all, it's the way replies going back and forth like this is making it like one.

lOngbOWmeN

1)its not "120 top UK unis", UK f'ing has only 120+ unis, where on earth did "top" spring from....if you cannot discern the diff between the 2, dont bother reading on

2)this whole thing about % started because you brought in the rankings, saying oh nottingham is 14th in UK so it should be in the list (even though its ranked #84 in the world, which obviously precludes it from being in your list of top 50), so i assume that what you meant was that nottingham is a "top" uni in the UK, hence it deserves to be included....and i proceeded to debunk your argument, that simply because its a "top" uni in the UK, it does not deserve to be included in the list of top 50 UK/US unis for 3 reasons, % wise (when you're the top 2 out of 2 candidates, do you consider yourself to be the top?), prestige-wise, funding-wise

3)i've told you the % comparison was by no means definitive, but with regards to the top 2 countries having world-class tertiary education systems, it can provide a useful guideline as to the relative rankings of unis from the 2 countries alongside one another (ok if that still isnt clear enough, look i'm NOT NOT NOT saying, top 50 unis in US comprise of the top 0.01%, while oxbridge comprise of the top 0.02% in the UK, so oxbridge < than top 50 US unis, and they should be excluded, what i AM saying is that, the list should only include 5-6 top UK unis, and that is true even in terms of relative prestige internationally, even more so in terms of funding)

4)as i said, you're the OP, its your list....so feel free adding in Nottingham and continue deluding yourself into thinking that it beats schools like UIUC, Purdue, Vandy, Emory, USC in terms of prestige, funding, quality watever...i'm out

dconcerned

1) first i asked in the op the ccers to make a list of 50 and narrow down to 30 top schools in uk and us, never the many factors involved and just concentrate on the overall academic strengths and prestige. whatever that means to you.

2) everything went okay until someone started popping names like soas, kcl, ucl, warwick, and nottingham. then you started jumping around and suggested removing edinburgh, warwick, kcl, soas. "big joke" was your quote. then started attacking the thread as pointless...first soas, then nottingham, what next? community colleges?

you had your own right to express your viewpoints but to start deleting other ppl's choices, (sacartically compared it to laundry list, pointless, next to community colleges) when the process was not even half done was not quite right, particularly when such schools were considered top in uk. i felt you went over the board; so i was forced to reply and show you the numbers/rankings to prove that they deserve to be on the initial list.

3) how could you compare all 120 uk to all 3000 us colleges and come up with the percentages. you said only 5-6 uk schools should be included. i don't agree. it's biased towards us colleges. out of say 50, 10-12 uks should be on the list. but that's only my view. we should leave it to other ccers. don't worry, most will go for us schools anyways and i don't mean it in a bad way, just simply bc most ccers are not familiar with uk other top schools apart from the top 5-6.

that's my point. we shouldn't be the judge. let's give it a fair try. don't preempt it.

tetrisfan

Have this discussion on the student room.co.uk (remove the spaces).

sefago

everyone should chill. if a top 50 list of only uk and american universities in recognition outside the US and their home countries Nottingham and SOAS and even USC would have to be named. We are not talking about recognition in the US: then Oxford, Cambridge, LSE are the only recognized schools or recogniton from a british perspective: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT with all the rest of the american schools being ********.

A true list would be comprehensive, take the whole world into account. Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore have the same recognition as university of ohio in 85% of the world. Not very portable degree. Nottingham does not raise eyebrows in the US but in other countries- sadly I don't agree with this- but it is comparable to Rice(which no one has ever heard off outside the US). I feel it would be difficult to compile a list because of regional bias.