- MIT
- Stanford
- Harvard
- Cambridge
- Caltech
- Oxford
- U of College of London
- ETH Zurich
- Empirial College London
- U of Chicago
https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2016
These rankings are always interesting, but keep in mind the methodology used to come up with these rankings. 50% is based survey data (Academic reputation and employee reputation), 30% is based on student ratios, and 20% is based on research citations per faculty. All with a strong international (and research) bias.
https://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings/methodology
Arguably the biggest bias in that ranking is giving a full 10 percent of the formula to the percentage of international students and faculty, as a proxy for how well the schools are respected in other countries.
That’s nonsense. The top US schools could be 100 percent foreign students if they wanted to be. The reason that a European or South Asian chooses University college London or Imperial College London or ETF Zurich is because they can get admitted there, not because they actuallly prefer them over UChicago, Princeton, Yale or Columbia, all of which are behind them on the list.
The British newspaper that sponsors that ranking undoubtedly knows this, but it wants to appeal to its audience.
Given the research bias, these rankings are of limited value at the undergraduate level. For example, there’s nothing wrong with Minnesota (#137), Pitt (#145), or Texas A&M (#160), but I wouldn’t regard them as equivalent to Dartmouth (#158) as options for undergraduates. Neither would the USN&WR rankings (which are, in theory, intended for use by undergraduates).
There are multiple “world university rankings”. The rankings referenced in this thread are the QS World University Rankings, which are different from the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
However, both rankings consider the percentage of international students, so your objection applies to both.
Pardon me for being a patriotic American but I find all the British rankings highly suspicious since they invariably include 4 to 5 British universities in the top 10. I have major problem accepting any ranking that places UCL and Imperial College over the likes of Columbia, Yale, Princeton and UPenn. And any ranking that put UC Berkeley at 28th in the world below Kings College of London and University of Hong Kong is simply a joke.
Here is an excerpt of the criticism leveled by David Blanchflower, Professor of Economics at Dartmouth and himself a graduate of UCL:
This ranking is complete rubbish and nobody should place any credence in it. The results are based on an entirely flawed methodology that underweights the quality of research and overweights fluff:
40 per cent – academic reputation from a global survey
10 per cent – from employer reputation
20 per cent – from citations by faculty
20 per cent – from student faculty ratio
5 per cent – proportion of foreign students
5 per cent – proportion of foreign faculty
The methodology is designed to underweight the performance of US universities that tend not to have a high proportion of foreign students or foreign faculty members – but who cares about that? It is unclear whether having more foreign students and faculty should even have a positive rank; less is probably better. So, the UK faculty all say they are wonderful, but that isn’t a plausible measure of quality. Another way to improve the rankings of UK universities would be to replace the 20 per cent for citations with a 20 per cent weight to any university whose name started with the letters CAM or OXF; the ranking is that absurd. Or they could weight by the proportion of buildings on the campuses built before 1500.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-blanchflower/2011/09/world-university-faculty
No academic I’ve ever spoken to takes the QS Rankings seriously. Apart from the International Students/Faculty indicator which skews results in favor of small countries, the academic and employer reputation surveys are highly suspect. For instance, in the employer reputation category, NUS (100.0) ranks higher than Princeton (97.9), Caltech (80.7), U Chicago (94.1), and has the same score as Yale, Harvard and Oxbridge. I live in Singapore, and the idea of an employer preferring NUS grads on average over the above mentioned universities is just laughable
For a good dose of humor, take a look at the subject rankings. For instance, in the Engineering & Technology Category, NTU beats Berkeley and Caltech, while Universiti Malaya ranks higher than Princeton and Cornell.
QS has always been criticized for its blatant bias in favor of UK universities and in general its less than reasonable methodology. And yet again it has proven everyone right with its nonsensical results.
I could, and still fail at understanding why many of these rankings put so much weight on name recognition and prestige. This one for example places 50% on just that. And what does having foreign students have at all to do with actual academic strength? Yet another terrible ranking methodology, and thus a terrible crafted list.
Why not weigh stuff that actually matters, such as school resources, employment output, faculty quality, etc.
The methodology seems just as reliable as USNews but people take those as if they’re the 10 commandments lol
@philbegas There are actually many people who question parts of the USNews rankings and many recognize that the actual ordering of the universities is a bit off. The reason why USNews has credibility is because one way or another it gets right which schools are in the top 10 and top 20, and by that I mean which schools the public sees at top 10, top 20 etc. Of course it is a self-reinforcing cycle since USNews affects public opinion but public opinion is not completely dictated by the rankings. There are many instances where the public opinion deviates from USNews, but that is only the case when it comes to individual positions. USNews is good at creating rough tiers (top 10, top 20 etc) and that is why it has caught on.
I think one of the “strengths” of US News, or at least what differentiates it from other rankings, is that it’s more undergraduate focused. That’s why so many high school students and their parents pay attention to it.
I don’t trust any ranking where Vanderbilt and Notre Dame are at 203 and then looking at all the US Schools put in front of them.
@85bears46 I’m British and I completely agree with you on that. You have so many more universities than us, would it not make sense for that sort of thing to be reflected in rankings?
And from the perspective of actually getting into these universities, I know that I could have easily got a place at UCL had I chosen to apply there, but my chances of getting into any world top 50 US college are minimal.
Global Rankings from US News and World Report
- Harvard University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Stanford University
- University of California--Berkeley
- California Institute of Technology
- University of Oxford
- University of Cambridge
- Princeton University
- Columbia University
- University of California--Los Angeles
USNWR has the same basic unis just reordered.
@sbballer:
USNews has the non-Oxbridge UK and British Empire unis much lower (IMO, closer to reality):
Imperial #19 instead of #9
UCL #23 instead of #7
Edinburgh #36 instead of #19
KCL #45 instead of #21
NUS #50 instead of #12
Nanyang #74 instead of #13
IMO, only Imperial may be considered an Ivy-equivalent (I’d say they are between Ivy-equivalent Caltech and GTech). I’d have UCL comparable to UMich. Edinburgh and KCL to UT-Austin and UNC. NUS and Nanyang to UT-Austin and A&M.
Harvard University USA 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 100.00
2 Stanford University USA 2 9 2 2 5 3 3 3 7 98.25
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA 3 2 12 3 15 2 2 2 1 97.12
4 University of Cambridge United Kingdom 1 3 10 6 12 8 14 12 45 96.13
5 University of Oxford United Kingdom 2 7 13 10 6 11 6 9 19 95.39
6 Columbia University USA 4 13 6 9 14 12 15 14 2 94.12
7 University of California, Berkeley USA 5 6 21 5 11 4 8 6 21 91.35
8 University of Chicago USA 6 11 14 8 17 16 11 17 83 90.72
9 Princeton University USA 7 4 15 4 82 25 26 37 109 88.72
10 Yale University
another world ranking from http://cwur.org/2016.php for 2016
http://cwur.org/methodology.php for methodology
same basic unis just reordered
@sbballer; Well, sure if you look only at the top 10, which will be some combination of HSM + Oxbridge + a few others in almost every ranking.
@philbegas I don’t know if your comment was directed at me, but I personally hate the USNews rankings also; they
re methodology is just as bad as this one. However, despite using somewhat questionable methodology, USNews doesn’t stray that far off from how I would rank US colleges from my personal research, with a few exceptions (I pretty much agree with USNews Top 20 schools, though I differ on a few particular order places).
However, not only does this ranking use rather bad methodology, but it’s rankings just seem off, to say the least (For example, having Notre Dame and Vandy in the 200s).
On a separate note, I personally like Forbes methodology the best. Though it is not without flaws, it’s way better than USNews in my opinion, who focuses too much on input and prestige.
@IsaacTheFuture it was inspired by, but not directed at your comment. I find myself frustrated with how people often cite US News as the be-all end-all ranking, and then argue with anybody who dares use a different ranking.