@jademaster, I try to stay clear from comparison of LACs to national universities as I think they play in slighlty different fields.
Secondly, I am not too sure about your statement regarding prize winners. I just checked and Amherst appears to have 4 Nobel Laureates, while UPenn has 7.
Even ignoring that, I suspect when looking at other numerous factors of prestige, UPenn would be better off in most, hence why it has a higher yield rate considering they are competing for the same pool of students.
Caltech, on average, competes for the same pool of students as HYPSM. Like you said, it is one of the most difficult schools to get into and has the huge endowment to support students with financial aid, so if I was to speculate why such a lower yield rate, I would speculate (on the balance on multiple factors) many of its accepted students are picking other highly selective, high test scores-required and more prestigious schools. The suspects are not unusual: HYPSM.
Those are the only US universities I can see having more Wow-factor than Caltech.
In translating successes into prestige, Harvard has been more successful than Yale in creating an international brand. I think even Stanford has been successful in being increasingly seen as Harvard’s key rival as the No 1 university in the USA. It is now a very highly regarded international brand.
I am very aware some students will pick Yale over Harvard in a cross-admit. My point is that majority will be the reverse.
My point still stands. Considering the Top 300 research fund cut off point is about $14m, I doubt you will see up to 40 UK universities with that much to spend on research.
All these sound like speculations and conjectures to make a point fit an argument. If UK still has only "2nd Tier" faculty, how come they are still competing well with US universities with "1st Tier" faculty and 2-3 times the research funds?
I think you need to understand what you need to compare. Don't compare what you think will fit your "conspiracy" argument. It is not about population vs population, or worse still economy vs economy. You should be comparing "No of institutions" vs "No of institutions". Or better still "No of lecturers" vs "No of lecturers". If by your previous arguments, you think there are only 300 research-focused universities in the US (add another 20 or so from Canada), European Union with 28 states needs only 12 each to march that.
Considering the UK alone has 35-40. Now think about Germany, France, Italy and other advanced nations, which are more socialist than even the UK.
You still don't get it? When you use Fortune 2000, you create a US bias because a quarter of the companies are US firms, hence would mostly hire CEOs that studied in the US. The big companies in France would hire mostly those that graduate from French universities. The ones in Finland, the same.
That is the point. They measure different things and all have their faults. Hence why you should not call one "bogus" and the other "gold standard" because it fits your arguments.
In regards to THE reputation ranking and Caltech, and your point is?
@LutherVan That data about Nobel Prizes came from the Quartz article I linked in my earlier post. Upenn has graduated 3 Nobel, Turing, or Fields winners from its undergraduate colleges. Amherst has produced 4. In both absolute number and per capita wise, Amherst outranks Penn (although a difference of +1 might not be statistically significant). I’m curious about what you would consider other numerous factors of prestige? Penn is an amazing school, especially for business. But what is consistently held to be measures of prestige for US colleges are the numbers of fellowships students win (such as Rhodes, Trumans, ,Marshalls, Fulbrights), percentage of students who go on to top law, medical, and graduate schools, alumni who win Pulitzers, Macarthurs, Guggenheims, Nobel Prizes, etc. As places that purport to be the most elite academic institutions, these are the criteria colleges use to communicate their value at the undergraduate level to other colleges and the public. These are the headlines they covet and put on their websites. In this respect, Amherst punches above its weight. It does well not only on a per capita basis, but in absolute numbers as well. It is just as, if not more, prestigious than Penn.
I would caution against making an assumption that Penn and Amherst competes for the same pool of students. We know this to not be true just by sheer size of applications (around 8,500 at Amherst, and around 30,000 at Penn the last time I checked). I will agree with you that LACs and research universities play in different fields, so I will add the caveat that fit plays a factor in where students choose to apply. We do not have cross-admit data to conclude that Penn and Amherst draws from the same pool of students, or that Penn’s higher yield is related to Amherst’s lower yield. Neither do we have that data for Caltech and HYPSM. Unless we do, we cannot assume that Caltech’s yield has something to do with HYPSM’s yields. Because for all we know, Caltech loses most of its cross admits to other technical schools not only including MIT, but also Cal Poly SLO, Harvey Mudd, and not to Yale or Harvard.
I also do not think data on cross-admits reveal much if fit plays a large role in where a student even applies. For example, we can assume that more cross-admits will choose to attend Harvard over Yale. Yet, how many students only apply to Yale? Or for that matter, to Brown or Dartmouth? We know from the scores alone that there is a huge overlap in SAT/ACT scores and GPA for these schools. This is where I think the key differences between US and UK universities come into play. There may be more top students who gravitate towards Harvard, but the US is so large that there will also be top students who only want to go to Caltech or Brown, or to liberal arts colleges, or even to large state schools. The many options top students have for undegrad diffuse prestige so that the hierarchy is flatter and blunter at the top.
Restricting applications to either Oxford or Cambridge immediately places those schools on a pedestal that no other schools can match up to. As good St. Andrews or UCL are, there is already the assumption that they are places for students who were rejected from Oxford or Cambridge. This may or may not be factual, but correct if I’m wrong but that assumption was pretty common when I was studying in the UK some years ago. This is not the case in the US. There is not the same popular assumption that Dartmouth or Brown students were rejected from Harvard. They are sufficiently prestigious that fit plays a large role in students’ choices. This is why measures of alumni outcome is more relevant to prestige than winning cross-admit battles or creating a international brand. UCLA, a wonderful research university with great departments, is more of a global brand than Dartmouth. It also has the most applicants of any college in the US. But Dartmouth consistently produces fellowship winners and alumni who go on to win prizes and accolades at a far higher rate.
That was a lot of writing, but my points are actually really brief. Compared to the UK, the pool of top students in the US is larger and factors not related to prestige play a larger role in where students choose to apply or matriculate. Prestige in the US is less rigidly defined than it is in the UK. Caltech elicits a wow-factor from anyone who knows what science is, equal to or exceeding the wow-factor that MIT or Harvard commands. Anyone familiar with US academics will likely not make a big distinction between Harvard and Dartmouth, let alone Harvard and Yale. Ivies like Penn may be more well known nationally or globally, but liberal arts schools like Amherst are considered as prestigious if not more among those who cultivate their educational pedigree. Ultimately, all of this talk about college prestige is classist. It’s not less classist in the US than the UK, it’s just that the consuming class here in the US have lots more options.
@jademaster, you raise some interesting and good points. Some I am already aware of, some new insights.
In regards to Nobel prizes, I simply checked Wikipedia to find out graduates from each school. I am thinking your source focused solely on undergraduate alumni, excluding postgrad.
When I stated “other prestige factors”, I meant like all those prestige factors I listed in #8.
Like I said, I really don’t like comparing LACs with research Universities that much because of their differences in structure, focus and size. It is just very messy. In most of those prestige factors, Amherst might not even feature to make a comparison because some of them are international and LACs are hardly known outside the USA. That said, I have no doubt about the prestige of most of them.
Yes, restricting applications to either Oxford or Cambridge definitely places them on a pedestal and you are right about the assumption about places in the next tier fo universities for Oxbridge rejects.
I do definitely agree with you that prestige in the US is less rigidly defined, but I want you to understand that when I give opinions on prestige, I am looking from a global angle, not restricted to internal US views. Caltech is just slightly less known globally than HYPSM universities, just like Imperial is slightly less known than LSE globally.
Sorry kids the naval gazing over the past 3 pages has been of limited use as X UK college vs Y US college is not very helpful. Just remember these few facts. If you recall the bell curves of the high school populations, the top 10% of school leavers in the UK are just as smart as the top 10% in the US, but obviously numerically superior in the US due population size. UK school leavers rank their schools by difficulty of admissions, the list was on my initial post. The smart kids are concentrated in these top schools. Some people have asked the question why are admit rates in the UK so high and why is it easy for US students to be admitted.
First off UK schools are self selecting; UK kids get 5 choices so they pick schools they think they are an academic match, there is no shotgun approach as in US where kids apply to top 20 schools hoping they get in 1, + safeties etc so much less overall number of application to each UK school, which tend to be larger than US schools, hence higher admit rates. The other issue which is key is that UK school leavers are offered places on previous academic record and PREDICTED grades at A level. UK kids go through a series of national exams before applying to university so they have a decent academic track record going into the process that the universities see. Their final set of exams are A levels usually 3-4 subjects sat at the end of the academic term of their final high school year. The university application cycle ends before the academic high school year, as such their high schools will predict the grades they are expected to achieve at A level on their applications . Their previous academic track record in national exams, their predicted grades, a short personal statement and in some instances an interview will determine whether a student receives and offer. The offer from the university will state what grade of A level is required in what subject, this is termed a conditional offer. UK kids will wait for their offers to come in from universities and then rank them in terms of firm and insurance. They have 1 firm choice which is, if they make the grades, thats where they are going, and an insurance choice which will be a university offering less strenuous admission standards, such that if they fail to get their first choice grades they are likely to make the grades of their insurance choice. Failure to meet the grades and admissions is denied.
There are 3 distinct advantages for US kids applying into UK schools. Firstly, admission is academics alone, if you are a stellar student your are more desirable so you don’t need to knock yourself out doing 3 varsity sports starting a charity or building an orphanage in Africa to be a well rounded candidate, they don’t care. Secondly it is not uncommon for US students to have met UK admissions standards by the end of their junior year. 3 x 5 in relevant AP subjects and minimum ACT of 28 will usually do it but not to the tippy top. However, be aware there is a pecking order in AP subjects, rule of thumb the languages, histories, and hard sciences Calcs, Chem, Bio, Physics are what they looking for. Applying for IR for example with Macro Econ, Psychology and Environmental science is not going to cut it even with 5’s, the subjects are not relevant or deemed rigorous enough. Check the universities website they will tell you what they expect. So compared to UK students you will have your grades during the admission cycle whereas UK kids wont have theirs until the application cycle is over. Thirdly and not unsurprisingly US students pay international fees which are desirable. There is no financial aid for International students and I would say room board tuition flights etc will run you $40k per year, but remember UK schools outside of Scotland are 3 years, Scotland 4 years.
One last point. Anyone in academia in the US will know these schools so don’t worry about grad school. Any multinational corporation, international consultancy or law firm and even US government agencies will know these schools, your local high school councillor or man on the street might not know but the people who matter will for the next stage in your career will. Hope this helps.
Sorry I forgot to mention. If you have met the admissions standards during the admission cycle and receive an offer it will usually be unconditional, that is there is nothing more you need to do, if you choose to accept the offer you are in. If there are conditions to the offer you will be told. Any UK kid receiving an unconditional will have usually taken a gap year so know their results in the current admissions cycle. If you have any questions on specific colleges where they a re located I would be happy to help. I find poster Collegemum has the application procedure down pat for UK schools and offers the best adivce.
OK, it’s Friday, so I finally have a bit of time to respond.
@elguapo1 is correct that the top 1% in the UK should be roughly the same caliber as the top 1% in the US. As it turns out, Oxbridge by themselves offers more places on a relative basis in the UK than all 30 Ivies and equivalents (by outcome) do in the US: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1.html (6.7K at Oxbridge X5 is more than the number of places at those 30 schools). As I said, by outcomes, I’m willing to grant that LSE (maaaaybe Imperial) belong up there as well.
UCL, Edinburgh, KCL, St. Andrews, Durham certainly are in the top 10%, and I think the American peers I have for them are accurate. I’ll change it a little to
UCL=UMich
KCL= UNC
Edinburgh= UT-Austin/UW-Madison
St. Andrews= W&M
Durham= UIUC
Warwick= NYU
They don't all that well. The top faculty in money-intensive fields tend to migrate to the US and STEM research resources at a place like UT-Austin tend to be better than at even Oxbridge.
"European Union with 28 states needs only 12 each to march that.
Considering the UK alone has 35-40. Now think about Germany, France, Italy and other advanced nations, which are more socialist than even the UK."
@LutherVan, why do you like to advance poor arguments that other people can punch a hole through? Do each of the other 27 countries in the EU have as many top research institutions as the UK? You do realize how small many of them are, right? And how does being socialist help you have top institutions? In Germany, professors aren’t paid much better than HS teachers, on average.
As it turns out, in the Europe-biased THE reputation survey that you trust so much, the US has 43 in the top 100, and the rest of Western Europe outside the UK has only 20 (all below not only UMich but also UT-Austin and UW-Madison).
Indeed, and there are only a slightly smaller number of global companies in Western Europe compared to the US.
And yet, you're the one extolling "prestige" rather than accomplishments.
My point is that the US has a deep upper and upper-middle class of unis (including Caltech), unlike the UK, with there being pretty much no gap between HYPSM and the other 25 or so Ivies/equivalents and the difference between UCL and Oxbridge is similar to the difference between UMich and HYPSM.
Evidently, they were spoiled by their rich elite private resource-plentiful experience.
I also know someone pretty well who’s going to uni in the UK as well (one of the ones I have a comp for) and it does seem more akin to an experience at one of the better publics in the States (with less flexibility). These days, however, Cal, UMich, UVa, UCLA, UNC (if OOS), UT-Austin (if OOS), W&M, and UIUC (for some of it’s most-well-regarded majors) are not easy to get in to, so Edinburgh, St. Andrews, KCL, UCL, Durham, and Warwick may still be good options for someone who is certain they know what they want to study and have the means. Obviously Oxbridge & LSE as well if they can get in.
BTW, as a way of comparison, in my Ivy-equivalents list, the Ivies & equivalents have enough places for a little over 1%.
The 17 schools on my “Near-Ivies” tier have places for roughly 1.5%.
The 19 schools on my “Other good schools” tier have places for another roughly 1.5%.
And you can quibble over that last tier; which schools should go on and which should come off, plus that would vary a lot by major as well, but all in all, the 50+ schools I listed there still account for 5% or less of total places in the US.
UCL by itself has about 1% or or more of places in the UK.
Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial + UCL, Edinburgh, KCL, St. Andrews, Durham, & Warwick probably have close to 10% of places in the UK.
Granted, the 50+ American schools I listed still don’t include WashU, CMU, Vandy, Emory, BC, or UCSD (or a bunch of tinier schools).
Rhodes scholars are all postgrads, and that experience is different anyway.
I googled them and Melissa Dell stayed in academia and is now an assistant professor in economics back at Harvard. Swati Mylavarapu didn’t, but proudly dwells on being a Rhodes Scholar in her linked in profile. So I don’t think either of them suffered in their careers.
@Conformist1688, most likely not. They did note what studying at even a UK elite was like compared to at a (much richer) American peer, however.
And while the undergrad and grad school experience is pretty different in the US (outside of unique schools like NCF), in the UK, a bachelors and masters is only a difference of degree (no pun intended) as the undergrad experience there is kind of like grad-school-lite. For undergrad, you only read your subject(s) (outside of unique setups like the Cambridge Natural Science Tripos), mostly take classes only with other students in your course and related courses, and a base of knowledge is already assumed, so at the top English* unis, if you’re not in an interdisciplinary course, it’s akin to 2 years in a major + a year at the Masters level. And like grad school, the students are expected to be adults and study independently.
*At Scottish unis, it’s roughly the same but with more flexibility as they have an extra year at the beginning that allows students to explore more and potentially switch to a related area or prune down from an interdisciplinary course.
This is nonsense. As I told you before, you are not comparing like-for-like.
Oxbridge and other UK universities offer places strictly on grades based on A-Levels that are the equivalent of first year in a US university. Everyone with the right grade can enter the university they qualify to because they get student loan they pay later.
US universities look at multiple factors and also have a hinderance with cost (if one does not get enough financial aid), which leads to people picking the one that best fits their finances and which will accept them.
The students in the30 Ivies are not the US’ top 1%. That is nonsense!
There are many students in Harvard that would not qualify to even be accepted at LSE based on their grades, talk less of Oxbridge.
And there are students at Wisconsin or Rice that can easily be Oxbridge material.
It is a DIFFERENT system!
The top faculty tend too migrate to the US but these “top faculty” with all the extra resources still struggle to do much better than the likes of LSE, Imperial, UCL, KCL, Edinburgh and Manchester when it comes to research in all assessments?
They must really be an outrageously “top faculty”.
You are ignorant about Europe.
Yes, they have as many top research institutions as UK. The difference is their structure.
Some of their top research institutions are just not educational facilities.
Have you ever heard of Institut des hautes études scientifiques? Or Max Planck Institutes?
They are research institutes that produce many prize winners like Abel and Nobel.
Yet they are not traditional “universities”. They are research institutes with top academics operating in a virtually non-teaching environment but can work jointly with universities.
In some other countries, like Russia, researchers might even be situated in government bodies.
Each country in Europe will have its research as they don’t depend on each other for such. It is not a free service, so governments have to independently fund their respective own.
And so what if professors in Germany are not paid as much as your nursery school teachers? They are not as productive as the professors in US? Does Germany look like a backward country to you?
The rest of Europe has only 20 because their research is not concentrated and not necessarily in a “university”.
Your argument is the one that is poor because you just don’t get how to do like-for-like comparisons.
So you realise your advocation of CWUR or ARWU being the gold standard is wrong?
Explain to me the gap between Oxbridge and UCL and how that is different from the gap between UMich and HYSPM.
@LutherVan:
Going backwards:
7. In terms of per capita alumni achievements (Nobels, Who’s Who placements, McKinsey placements, whatever), the gap between Oxbridge and UCL is at least as big as the difference between HYPSM and UMich. Arguably bigger.
5. and 6. ??? How do you come to that conclusion?
3. In ARWU, 15 American unis outrank UCL, 17 outrank Imperial, and 29 outrank Manchester (the other UK unis you listed are even lower), so how do you draw the conclusion that American unis struggle to outrank non-Oxbridge UK ones in money-intensive fields?
Finally, no, it is not like for like. Very different entrance systems, but you seem to hold this assumption that A-Levels determine talent best, rather than a holistic method. How do you know that’s true? And many Harvard students may struggle to get in to LSE, but many LSE students would struggle to get in to not only Harvard but Northwestern and the other Ivies/equivalents.
And another thing: if A-levels actually determine talent best, then not only Northwestern would be far above UCL, but even UMich, as some students who would be at Oxbridge in the UK would end up at UMich and the like instead in the US.
Entry to the elite universities in the UK are based on academic performance, academic potential and a genuine interest in the subject the the student intends to study, as they are after all institutions of higher learning. As a result the difference in academic achievement between the cohort’s in the elite universities can be wafer thin. In the US admittance to an elite university could also depend on ones ability to put a ball in a net, whether your grandfathers name is on a university building or whether your parents are willing and able to spend $250,000 on an undergraduate degree. I would argue there is a somewhat displaced notion in the US that admittance into the Ivy League is not so much on the quality of education, but that somehow matriculation is the ‘golden ticket’ which will catapult them to the 1% winners circle, or more likely keep them there. There is no doubt UK parents and kids want the same thing, it is just that in the UK it is more of an academic meritocracy.
How does that show the gaps in the quality of the institution or students?
And how many times do I have to tell you about different systems?
The UK is aristocratic, the US is meritocratic.
The UK is like one state, the US has 50.
Because it appears you cannot defend why you claim one is bogus and the other is gold standard.
And your point is?
I thought all the top faculty go to the USA, how come UCL, Imperial and Manchester are still outranking most of your “30 Ivies” and “majority of your other flagship publics”?
I don’t hold any such assumption.
I hold an assumption they are different and hardly comparable hence, unlike you, would not use it as an argumentative point.
@elguapo1, wafer-thin when it comes to test scores, certainly, but again, is that a better sifting mechanism when you measure by something other than how well someone does on tests in a subject (or more broadly, excellence in one/two fields?
The Scots and Welsh would be surpised to hear that the UK is like one state. And the differences across just England are often bigger than across different US states.
Furthermore, if you are not measuring the excellence of a student body by alumni achievements, then what are you measuring by?
And you are contradicting yourself. You say that they are very different and not comparable, but before, you tried to compare UK unis with US ones.
Also, 14 of my Ivy equivalents are LACs, so don’t appear in the international research rankings. Most Ivy/equivalent research U’s do outrank the non-Oxbridge UK unis. I have the the UK unis below Oxbridge and LSE to be equivalent to good American publics (OK, Imperial, you could argue is equivalent to private Caltech). But you still have not shown how UCL=UMich and Manchester=Wisconsin are not apt comparisons.
Finally, are you aware that the rich private American Ivies/equivalents offer very generous fin aid to Americans?
Regarding 5 & 6: I regard any ranking that gives bonus points for diversity (as the THE and QS rankings do) to be bogus. Diversity doesn’t tell you how good the student body and faculty are.