What Are the Top Ten Universities Globally?

[J77]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7083292.stm

1 Harvard University (US)
2 University of Cambridge (UK)
2 University of Oxford (UK)
2 Yale University (US)
5 Imperial College London (UK)
6 Princeton University (US)
7 California Institute of Technology (US)
7 University of Chicago (US)
9 University College London (UK)
10 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)

Of course, this is based on a general reputation of quality and not individual departments/groups.

e2a: The top 100 science ones...

Rank Institution Country Score Citations per paper

1 Cambridge University UK 100.0 7.6
2 Oxford University UK 95.0 7.5
3 University of California, Berkeley US 93.1 9.5
4 Harvard University US 88.9 11.1
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology US 87.8 9.6
6 Princeton University US 80.1 11.6
7 Stanford University US 79.1 9.5
8 California Institute of Technology US 73.2 11.9
9 Imperial College London UK 72.9 6.3
10 Tokyo University Japan 72.1 5.6
11 ETH Zurich Switzerland 71.6 6.8
12 Beijing University China 67.6 3.3
13 Kyoto University Japan 66.6 4.9
14 Yale University US 65.7 9.5
15 Cornell University US 64.5 6.9
16 Australian National University Australia 63.1 6.1
17 Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris France 60.8 6.0
18 University of Chicago US 60.4 11.6
19 Lomonosov Moscow State University Russia 60.1 2.0
20 University of Toronto Canada 54.9 6.0
21 University of California, Los Angeles US 53.1 8.2
22= National University of Singapore Singapore 52.4 3.5
22= Pierre and Marie Curie University France 52.4 4.8
24 Ecole Polytechnique France 52.3 4.9
25 University of Columbia US 49.9 8.8
26 University of Texas at Austin US 49.2 6.6
27 Melbourne University Australia 48.6 5.0
28 Heidelberg University Germany 48.0 6.7
29 University of Illinois US 47.5 6.0
30 La Sapienza University, Rome Italy 46.4 4.6
31 University of California, Santa Barbara US 46.3 9.4
32 China University of Sci & Technol China 45.7 3.3
33 Indian Institutes of Technology India 45.1 –
34 University of Michigan US 45.0 7.1
35 Sydney University Australia 44.8 4.4
36 University of California, San Diego US 44.0 8.3
37= Göttingen University Germany 43.6 4.7
37= McGill University Canada 43.6 5.0
39 Paris XI — Orsay France 43.5 5.5
40 Seoul National University South Korea 43.3 4.2
41= New South Wales University Australia 43.1 4.9
41= Tsing Hua University China 43.1 2.3
43 Munich University Germany 43.0 5.9
44 Utrecht University Netherlands 42.4 5.8
45 University of British Columbia Canada 41.3 6.4
46 Edinburgh University UK 40.6 7.8
47 Copenhagen University Denmark 40.2 4.8
48 Johns Hopkins University US 40.0 9.9
49 Osaka University Japan 39.6 4.6
50 Technion — Israel Institute of Technol Israel 39.1 3.9
51 University of Wisconsin US 39 6.5
52 Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel 38.5 5.0
53 Bonn University Germany 38.3 4.6
54 Monash University Australia 37.9 –
55 Pennsylvania University US 37.8 9.4
56= Delft University of Technology Netherlands 37.7 5.6
56= Technical University Berlin Germany 37.7 –
58= Auckland University New Zealand 37.5 –
58= Queensland University Australia 37.5 4.3
58= Tel Aviv University Israel 37.5 5.4
61 National Taiwan University Taiwan 37.4 3.4
62 Malaysia National University Malaysia 36.8 –
63 Fudan University China 36.7 –
64 Aarhus University Denmark 36.6 6.4
65= Tohoku University Japan 36.2 4.6
65= Warwick University UK 36.2 –
67= Humboldt University Berlin Germany 36.1 5.3
67= Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan 36.1 –
69 Hong Kong University Sci & Technol Hong Kong 35.8 –
70 Nanjing University China 35.7 2.7
71 University of Hong Kong Hong Kong 35.3 –
72 Helsinki University Finland 35.2 6.0
73= St Petersburg State University Russia 35.1 –
73= Vienna University Austria 35.1 4.7
75 Technical University Munich Germany 34.9 5.9
76 Georgia Institute of Technology US 34.2 5.8
77 Penn State University US 34.1 7.0
78 Leiden University Netherlands 34.0 6.5
79 Lund University Sweden 33.9 6.2
80 University of Adelaide Australia 33.8 –
81 Aachen RWTH Germany 33.6 4.9
82= Korea Advanced Inst Sci & Technol South Korea 32.9 –
82= New York University US 32.9 –
84 King’s College London UK 32.8 –
85 Nagoya University Japan 32.7 5.4
86 Manchester University & Umist UK 32.5 5.0
87= Nanyang Technological University Singapore 32.4 –
87= Vienna Technical University Austria 32.4 –
89 Carnegie Mellon University US 32.3 9.9
90= Free University Berlin Germany 32.2 4.6
90= University College London UK 32.2 6.0
90= State University New York US 32.2 7.5
93= Bristol University UK 32.1 6.1
93= Trinity College Dublin Ireland 32.1 –
95 Malaya University Malaysia 31.9 –
96 Chalmers University of Technology Sweden 31.7 4.4
97= Maryland University US 31.5 7.2
97= University of Waterloo Canada 31.5 –
99 Brown University US 31.0 8.4
100= Uppsala University Sweden 30.7 5.3
100= Washington University US 30.7 8.9

Loads more stats here http://www.thes.co.uk/statistics/international_comparisons/2006/main.aspx

(Requires a free 14 day trial subscription.)

 

[mgb_phys]

Lies damn lies and university (or school) league tables
I worked at one of the ones near the top of the list when our Research Assesment Ranking ranking came in - we didn't get a full 5* !
Problem is that an applied phyics course was on the list. We didn't teach an applied physics course. So half of the peer reviewers had crossed it out, the other half had automatically given it a 5* because we were the U of XXXXX.
The research council just averaged the 50% of 5 and the 50% of zero and gave us 2.5 dragging down our score.
An argument was made that since we got a bunch of 5* for a course that didn't exist then on average we actauly scored more than 5 out of 5!

The RAE has now been abolished/renamed/rebranded because it led to closing down any non 5* dept just to keep their average score up.

 

[fourier jr]

Gottingen really sort of disappeared didn't it? (not that McGill is a total non-entity) That list would have been way different 80 years ago, & not just because many on the list (MIT & others) didn't exist back then. ****in nazis.

 

[billiards]

Wow! I went to a top 10 uni.

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

Woot woot, #not even on the list.

 

[proton]

yay, my school is in the top 25!

 

[J77]

LOL @ the polarisation of responses which league tables induce.

mgb -- yeah, the rae is a big game. It's like the transfer window in the EPL

(There again, I did work in a 5*A dept. )

 

[Math Jeans]

yey. Mine is #7 in the top 100 science school list!

 

[jim mcnamara]

You should post the 100 worst. My undergrad is listed in the best, so my postgrad must be the worst. At least if sports or national recognition for anything academic counts in the rating, it should be # 12774

 

[ShawnD]

Fortunately, these numbers mean literally nothing. Education is only a stepping stone, and experience is the important one. If a company needs to choose between a guy who graduated from Uganda Tech and has 10 years of engineering experience with Imperial Oil versus some guy with 1 year of experience from some no-name company and a PhD from MIT, you can guess which guy will be hired. Hint: the guy from Uganda will be hired.

Kind of a funny story, but the guy who rents the lab across the hall from me has a PhD in chemistry and is a contributing author of several science books, but he still can't get part time work as a lab tech (to supplement his income since he just started his own business). Education papers might look pretty on the wall, but until they have some kind of monetary value to them (more jobs with better pay), looking pretty is all they do.

 

[cristo]

Fortunately, these numbers mean literally nothing. Education is only a stepping stone, and experience is the important one. If a company needs to choose between a guy who graduated from Uganda Tech and has 10 years of engineering experience with Imperial Oil versus some guy with 1 year of experience from some no-name company and a PhD from MIT, you can guess which guy will be hired. Hint: the guy from Uganda will be hired.

LOL @ the polarisation of responses which league tables induce.

 

[ShawnD]

What are the criteria for best university? Are they talking about academic, like saying "university X has the most intense electrical engineering program" or is it a generic "lol this university has a mix of 20% from each of 5 different ethnic groups, which makes it diverse".

Silly as it sounds, a lot of half-ass universities do advertise their diversity. It's kind of like those car companies that advertise their warranty as opposed to the actual quality of the car. Hey it breaks down a lot, but that's cool because we'll totally fix it, for realz.

 

[moe darklight]

neither of the universities I'm applying for are on the list

 

[Gib Z]

The one I'm going undergrad for (if I get accepted of course) is 35, and if not, 41. Post grad I'm not too sure, I don't really want to go overseas but everyone tells me If I want to be a Professor I have to do that overseas :( So if that has to happen, maybe one of the top 10 Unis would be nice =]

 

[Moonbear]

What are those science rankings based upon? Funding? Publications? I see that one of the columns there are citations per publication. Of course, lumping together all the science programs together doesn't really help you know if the specific one you're interested in is the one dragging down the score, or one at the top. A lot of rankings are based on research productivity (ability to bring in extramural funds, numbers of publications, number of citations of publications, etc.), which can be helpful for choosing graduate schools. However, don't assume those are useful for choosing an undergraduate college. Those excellent scientists who are pulling up those rankings aren't necessarily the ones teaching your classes.

As an example, one of my colleagues did a post-doc at Harvard and still has contacts there. In chatting with one of his friends there, his friend's comment was something along the lines of, "I don't know how you can get any research done at all with your teaching load." His teaching load is pretty typical for our department. At Harvard, the teaching load is very limited so there's a ton more time to get research done. So, those top researchers at Harvard are not the ones teaching the classes, because their time is protected to get research done. At an institution like where I am, teaching loads take a lot of time away from research time, which will lower rankings based on research productivity, but on the other hand, those of us doing the research are also the ones teaching the classes here.

 

[J77]

Come on, cristo. It's just a bit of GD fun

 

[cristo]

Come on, cristo. It's just a bit of GD fun

I know; I was agreeing that your comment was pretty true. When league tables come out there are either people who say "yes.. my university's in the top n" or "mine isn't there, but... it's better not to be in the list anyway for reasons x y and z"

League tables are pretty useless, since you could always write one that made your university at the top!

School league tables are the worst, and it's school tables that make the education system over here less bothered about teaching children and more bothered about making sure they fit certain criteria to get a good place in the table.

 

[Gokul43201]

Fortunately, these numbers mean literally nothing. Education is only a stepping stone, and experience is the important one.

Not if you wish to pursue fundamental research. What fraction of high quality research (publications in Nature, Science, etc. or publications with over 100 citations) is authored by people without a PhD (in the bag or about to happen)?

 

[Oerg]

Makes me think whether I am making a wrong decision. I am going to Nanyang Technological university in august next year, which is like #87 on the list whereas I turned down a offer from National University of Singapore which is like #22 on the list, 60\\, ranks in difference.

I chose NTU cos the professor was really sincere and made a point to call potential undergrads to persuade them into NTU's course. Also, NTU was providing a combined course in physics and applied physics with direct honours. Have I made a wrong decision? i don't want to be regretting when I go job hunting after my studies.

 

[Math Jeans]

The one I'm going undergrad for (if I get accepted of course) is 35, and if not, 41. Post grad I'm not too sure, I don't really want to go overseas but everyone tells me If I want to be a Professor I have to do that overseas :( So if that has to happen, maybe one of the top 10 Unis would be nice =]

Stanford. Stanford all the way.

 

[binzing]

So in the opinion of everyone here, how does OSU (Oregon State) rank for a biology school. I really have to many interests and would love to get a degree in so many things. But I am focusing on starting with biology. Any opinions are a great help.

 

[Bladibla]

Seeing UCL in the top ten of that list shows just how idiotic that list is. Up to the top 5 I would be ok with, but having UCL even in the top 20 would be idiotic.