Is Durham University actually a good school?

International Students
41

@LutherVan, I’m not accepting because I’m American and the other people who disagree with you also are American or have a good deal of experience living in the States while you are not and do not.

It’s as if I went to you and tried to convince you that Brits really believe that Swarthmore is more prestigious than UCLA. Really, really. Most Brits really believe that. I can pull out some BS statistics showing that Swarthmore has a greater percentage of Brits than UCLA or some BS statistic like that. So do you realize how ridiculous you sound?

BTW, I’m not arguing that Warwick is more known in the States than UCL. I’m saying that they’re equally (un)known.

And your own statistics show that St.Andrews is more popular with Americans for undergrad than UCL is.

42

@PurpleTitan, at no time did I ever say St Andrews was not more popular for undergrad thab UCL. I just said there were some reasons for that.

Warwick and UCL are not equally (un)known. I am aware UCL is not well known in the US, and many that hear the name would wonder why you forgot to utter the last “A”, but it is still far better known than Warwick.

I am not showing you stats, I am showing you selections. You don’t overwhelmingly select what you don’t know.

Your “niche” statements in #27 suggested you alluded Durham and Warwick are a bit more known in the US than UCL.

43

@PurpleTitan, at no time did I ever say St Andrews was not more popular for undergrad thab UCL. I just said there were some reasons for that.

Warwick and UCL are not equally (un)known. I am aware UCL is not well known in the US, and many that hear the name would wonder why you forgot to utter the last “A”, but it is still far better known than Warwick.

I am not showing you just stats, I am showing you selections. You don’t select what you don’t know.

Your “niche” statements in #27 suggested you were alluding Warwick and Durham were slightly better known in the US than UCL.

44

@LutherVan, please try reading carefully. I didn’t write post #27. That was @MYOS1634.

And no, UCL isn’t really “far better known” in the States than Warwick. Both are virtually unknown.

Before joining CC a couple years ago, I didn’t differentiate UCL from SOAS or the other UoL colleges. There was Oxbridge & LSE, I had heard Imperial referred to as the British MIT, I knew that St. Andrews, Edinburgh, and the other Ancient Scottish unis were very old, and then there was everyone else.

And I had attended an Ivy-equivalent for undergrad, got an MBA from a M7 b-school, and worked on Wall Street, the buyside, as well as Silicon Valley.

If you look on LinkedIn, this is understandable. If you look at who works at McKinsey, among UK uni grads, it’s Oxford followed Cambridge followed by LSE with everyone else far below.

This isn’t the case with American unis, where Northwestern places better than both Yale and Princeton, UChicago, Duke, and Cornell are at the same level as Princeton (both UMich and UVa, which are much bigger, also are around there), and Columbia and Penn (which has Wharton) are on the same level as Stanford and MIT.

The point is, US higher education has a very strong and deep upper and upper-middle class of unis and colleges (understandable given that the US has 5 times the UK’s population) while most UK unis outside of Oxbridge & LSE (and St. Andrews these days; maybe Imperial and Edinburgh as well) would draw blank stares in the States.

In any case, it’s doesn’t matter. UCL places in to the City just fine and recruiters in MBB consulting will know of it.

45

@PurpleTitan, oh, my bad.

My apologies.

You make some goods points about the spread of opportunities in the US vs the concentration in the UK, which I am aware of. I can also appreciate your position about not knowing much about UCL before joining CC but I find that point anecdotal. You are just one of many people in a pool.

From the evidence I have seen (and shown), of the few in the US with knowledge and interest about UK universities, the Golden Triangle generally (not anecdotally) appear to be better known than Durham and Warwick. That does not shy away from your point that majority in the US will not know Imperial, UCL and KCL.

Oxbridge and LSE are the most known in the US.

46

This table is quite interesting in relation to my points in post #39 about HYPSM always being top in any valid prestige rankings.

He is a table of the Top 10 US universities in producing scholars in 5 prestigious scholarships:

https://www.k-state.edu/media/achievements/pdfs/2015%20May%20Top_scholar_rankings_private_and_public_4.pdf