A list of the world's top university

[Thepuppetmaster]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1343642,00.html

A rank of top 200 universities in the world according to The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) published in The Times on 5 November 2004, here is their top 20:

1. Harvard University (US)

2. University of California, Berkeley (US)

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)

4. California Institute of Technology (US)

5. Oxford University (UK)

6. Cambridge University (UK)

7. Stanford University (US)

8. Yale University (US)

9. Princeton University (US)

10. ETH Zurich (Switzerland)

11. London School of Economics (UK)

12. Tokyo University (Japan)

13. University of Chicago (US)

14. Imperial College London (UK)

15. University of Texas at Austin (US)

16. Australian National University (Australia)

17. Beijing University (China)

18. National University of Singapore (Singapore)

19. Columbia University (US)

20. University of California, San Francisco (US)

The league table is based on a survey of 1,300 academics in 88 countries across 5 continents. The respondents were asked to name the best universities in their academic fields of expertise. Other objective criteria used in the ranking were the amount of cited research produced by faculty members (used as an indicator of intellectual vitality), the faculty-to-student ratio, a university's success in attracting foreign students and internationally renowned academics in the global education market.

http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/newsroom/2004/rankingsTimes.pdf complete rank of 200

[canuck]

My school for my undergrad studies ranked 46 - University of British Columbia

[TSkillet]

We're #2! We're #2!

(Actually, I'd question the validity of this survey - it seems odd to throw in general research + teaching universities with a school like UCSF (#20) - which is a pure medical school.)

[skylee]

There are four Hong Kong universities (out of a total of eight) in those 200.

[Quest]

They always change:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc/tier1/t1natudoc_brief.php

usnews ranks America's universities once a year.

They also do ranking by major, as well as gradschool ranking.

PS: they used to let you see more than two rows......

[TSkillet]

The US News and World Report one is really flawed - it's very biased against public schools (I'm not just saying that because my school ends up in the 20s).

They give equal weight to admissions standards and academic reputation - to things such as alumni donation rate and student/teacher ratio - things which hurt public schools very badly.

[bhchao]

The US News and World Report one is really flawed - it's very biased against public schools (I'm not just saying that because my school ends up in the 20s).

I was quite surprised to see Berkeley in the #2 spot. In the yearly US News and World Report, Berkeley and UCLA are not even in the top ten.

All the major Ivy Leagues (Harvard, Princeton, Yale) are almost always in the top five in the annual survey, and Columbia is usually ranked in the top ten.

[gato]

I was quite surprised to see Berkeley in the #2 spot. In the yearly US News and World Report' date=' Berkeley and UCLA are not even in the top ten.

All the major Ivy Leagues (Harvard, Princeton, Yale) are almost always in the top five in the annual survey, and Columbia is usually ranked in the top ten.[/quote']

Berkeley is excellent for research and graduate education, but not as good for undergraduate education because of its large class sizes, four to eight hundred students for some first-year introductory classes. UCLA is probably similar. There are some great professors, but you have to be fairly aggressive and compete with your many classmates to get any attention from them. It's much easier to get face time with graduate students, some of whom are brilliant, too, so it's not too bad.

It is true, however, that a Berkeley has better name recognition internationally than some of sometimes higher-ranked private schools (Brown, for example).

[TSkillet]

but not as good for undergraduate education because of its large class sizes, four to eight hundred students for some first-year introductory classes

I think this is pretty few and far between. I only had 4 super large classes - most of my classes had between 15 and 100 students - and even then, in any class I ever had above 30 students ,there was lecture . .. and then section (which normally had 10 students).

Getting face time with a professor was really easy too - all you had to do was make an effort - there was no need to be "aggressive" - every prof at Cal had office hours.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that an undergrad education at Cal was more difficult than some of the vaunted ivy league/private schools due to grade inflation and the "hard in/easy stay" model of the top private schools.

[gato]

I think this is pretty few and far between. I only had 4 super large classes - most of my classes had between 15 and 100 students - and even then, in any class I ever had above 30 students ,there was lecture . .. and then section (which normally had 10 students).

Perhaps you were in engineering. Their clases are somewhat smaller once you get past the four intro physics and math classes. Engineering also has more money and a lower student-to-professor ratio than other departments. Biology's the worst in terms of class size. Most of the intro bio and chem courses, a majority of science classes in the first two years, have 600+ students. For some classes, they split the class into two. One class can watch the live lecture, the other a video recording of the lecture. I skipped out on many of those lectures and relied on the textbook and lecture notes that were sold by the student assocation ("Black Lightning notes"). The sections are much smaller and some of the grad students are very good (some of my TAs are now professors at major universities), and that makes up for the large lectures to some degree but not entirely. There are TAs who are not so good and didn't know much beyond the textbook.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that an undergrad education at Cal was more difficult than some of the vaunted ivy league/private schools due to grade inflation and the "hard in/easy stay" model of the top private schools.

That's debatable. But it's nearly impossible to prove which side is correct because you have a different set of students at each school and thus the grading curves are not directly comparable. The median SAT score of an entering freshman at Harvard or Stanford today is somewhere around 1500. At Berkeley it's somewhere around 1300.

[TSkillet]

I was actually a poli sci major - but based on anecdotal evidence (having friends at Harvard, Princeton and Stanford) - seemed to confirm that it was more difficult to fail out of those schools than out of Berkeley.

[gato]

I was actually a poli sci major - but based on anecdotal evidence (having friends at Harvard, Princeton and Stanford) - seemed to confirm that it was more difficult to fail out of those schools than out of Berkeley.

I've heard this claim many times, but I've never heard it substantiated. Is this based on your friends' personal experience with being on the verge of flunking out?

[TSkillet]

Actually - just because there tends to be a lot more hand-holding at those schools. This has since changed - but when I was in school, at Stanford, you could drop a class on the day of the final. You are required to have regular meetings with your academic advisor - and grade inflation is confirmed - there are numerous articles about it across the ivy leagues and other difficult private schools.

Contrast that with Berkeley - where it's pretty much sink or swim - if you need help, you need to seek it out.

[gato]

Contrast that with Berkeley - where it's pretty much sink or swim - if you need help, you need to seek it out.

You're absolutely right that there's no hand-holding at Berkeley. If you start falling, there'll probably be no one to catch you. I was actually able to drop a class halfway into a semester once by appealing to the dean, who approved it because I was taking 20 units at the time. It probably doesn't happen normally. Still, I doubt that a person with the same capability expending the same amount of effort would necessarily get a higher grade at Stanford or the Ivys than at Berkeley. It's just that at Berkeley one is more likely to fall into a funk and get behind. It happened to me to some extent in my second year when I stopped going to those big lectures.

[TSkillet]

Well - that's not really my point. I think if you work hard at Stanford or Berkeley or Harvard - and are smart, you'll get good grades.

But I think it's also slighty easier to get by at Stanford or Harvard or Yale with less hard work.