– you can see from the tone of many of the above posts that scientific research is more highly prized in Asia at this time than the humanities/social sciences (history, english, sociology, psychology, etc.) which can be so… culturally based. Science (and math) transend culture for the most part, though not always.</p>
<p>Yale is not as focused on scientific research (a correlary can be found in Oxford) as Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Cal Berkeley. Not better, or worse, simply a different focus – slightly different in the same way that Princeton is slightly different in that it does not have professionals schools in Law, Business or Medicine. That is not to say that Yale and Oxford do not contribute to new scientific knowledge. Each does, and probably still among the top 12-15 in scientific research, simply not to the degree that Stanford, Cal Berkeley, MIT and Harvard do.</p>
<p>I would argue politely that Oxford is quite renowned and highly respected in every single country is Asia. It’s a school name almost synonymous to Harvard, or maybe even more so for the aristocrats. It’s the oldest academic institution in the English speaking world and a breeding ground of top political leaders. </p>
<p>Oxford is more respected and popular globally than Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, and even my own alma mater, Cambridge.</p>
Harvard is number one, we like it or not, followed by MIT, Yale, Stanford, Caltech, Cal. Princeton is difficult to pronounce in Chinese, but is okay. Followed by Michigan, Wisconsin, Penn, CMU, ivies -no Dartmouth and Stanford & MIT included, Big Ten, all state flagship schools. No LACs.
Their private schools are new and usually not very good. So, state schools here sound better.</p>
<p>All those schools above, if you ask them at different times, they would tell you different stories. Most people don’t really know, like we don’t their school systems.</p>
<p>I am a chinese student studying in u.s.,
before I came here, the only u.s. college I had heard of was:
Harvard, Stanford, UCB, UCLA, MIT…
I think that those are what chinese mostly talk about</p>