ShanghaiRanking's Academic Ranking of World Universities
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Which university is the best?? is Columbia really better than Caltech? Is Harvard actually better than Princeton. Is Cornell really better than Duke?
Since the US is 6 times bigger than the UK, there are (6 x 2 =) 12 Oxbridges - 12 Oxbridge-level, and higher than Oxbridge-level, universities.
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As we will learn on this page, evaluation of unis is quite subjective - people define better and best differently. People have different goals and differetn things are important topeople. Some people care about the most money after graduation, some care about meeting academically diverse pool of academics, some care about the volume of research a uni outputs. As we will see, rankings capture a small part of what is holistically important, also for people that care about different things.
The university you go to will largely define your life, both professionally and socially - let's make sure you live the best & right life by applying the best thinking to your decision. So, we will use logic and good reasoning. This page will also be a blueprint for how to make good decisons - being holistic, fair, and systematic as opposed to misinformation, lack of perspective, different interests and imperfect logic - just look at this: as one major metric for the Final rank, how can Harvard Alumni score have a score of 100 (already strange, to have been made the standard for perfection) and Stanford be 44? What does that mean that Stanford’s alumni are half as good as Harvard’s?
That is quite ridiculous. So, you cannot trust rankings fully - they do not capture anywhere near the full or accurate power of universities. (Also since it’s the top 2 in this ranking, the most obvious ones, so you’d think it would be less strange).
Below is the full list of metrics this particular ranking measures - I am shocked because a ‘good’ or the ‘best’ uni is a lot more than these things!:
Does this mean that Columbia is better than Harvard, and that Dartmouth is better than Amherst? Yes, and also Not necessarily - with unis of the same band of instrinsic excellence, they are as good as each other. Like we said: at the same time, ‘better’ is an entirely subjective term - people bundle a different combination of factors into what makes a uni amazing for them. So how do you decide what unis are best for you? What is good to consider?
Pick and choose - some of these will not be important to you. Then weigh - some factors will be more important than others. Every student wants unique things from uni and life.