Posted on 09/11/2012 8:10:05 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The top three spots on the QS World University Rankings changed this year, with MIT taking the top spot for 2012. MIT overtook the University of Cambridge, which took second place ahead of Harvard, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
British schools took four of the top six spots, but American colleges and universities occupy 13 of the top 20 spots in the annual ranking.
This ranking is based on reputation among academics, reputation among employers, citations per faculty, staff-to-student ratios and international attractiveness. Check out the entire list:
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) United States
2 University of Cambridge United Kingdom
3 Harvard University United States
4 UCL (University College London) United Kingdom
5 University of Oxford United Kingdom
6 Imperial College London United Kingdom
7 Yale University United States
8 University of Chicago United States
9 Princeton University United States
10 California Institute of Technology (Caltech) United States
11 Columbia University United States
12 University of Pennsylvania United States
13 ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Switzerland
14 Cornell University United States
15 Stanford University United States
16 Johns Hopkins University United States
17 University of Michigan United States
18 McGill University Canada
19 University of Toronto Canada
20 Duke University United States
21 University of Edinburgh United Kingdom
22 University of California, Berkeley (UCB) United States
23 University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
24 Australian National University Australia
25 National University of Singapore (NUS)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
An engineer, good friend of mine I worked with years ago graduated with an MSEE from MIT. We worked in RF for Scientific-Atlanta at the time and got to talking about educations, etc. He said, MIT was great, theory out the ying-yang, etc. But.....
He asked me about waveguides for RF. He said I know the formulas to show how an RF wave propagates down the guide...couldn’t for the life of him figure out how it’s done... how did they get that RF wave in there in the first place?
I explained it to him and showed him with real hardware....he said, they never taught any of this. This from the pre- and post-war lab (Lincoln)who pioneered radar in this country using British hardware (magnetron).....
UCLA made the list? Unbelievable!
Harvard....their motto is “TRUTH”.....proven by Paleface Dizzy Lizzy Warren. Their motto should be “EXCRETUM”. What a laugh.
>> I showed him with real hardware ...
Agreed - check out the current I3E journals - lotsa numbers and formulas, not much hands on stuff. (Confirmed by my Goddaughter, who got a full ride in Brass Rat’s math department in the 90s.)
On a different subject, can’t help but notice that my undergrad alma mater, the University of Miami didn’t make the list. :o)
Oh well - at least it keeps that short squatty lefty, Donna Shalala out of government. That’s gotta be worth her $1.2 million annual salary.
Rejected from #9.
Accepted by 14, 20, 27, 84
Went to #14 from 1979-1983. Cornell. Beautiful setting. They taught me how to build oil refineries and chemical plants, just before no one wanted to build them anymore. Outside of engineering it was uber-liberal.
Should’ve gone to the University of Minnesota. Same quality of education for a lot less money.
Also there might be another reason for this trend and its humanware. When I first started college there was a high percentage of engineering profs with industrial experience. (Even my physics department has some!), now they are as rare as gainfully employed French Literature majors. So an unspoken reason could be, too many professors in the curriculum decision making process with no idea what real industrial-grade engineering is. You have engineering profs who have been on a college campus from eighteen on. many with their world outlook still stuck at 18.
Now mix in the very high number of foreign profs who are not very likely to have an American industrial experience either (or any industrial experience particularly if they com from country where a sharp rock & stick is high tech!) and you have a recipe for increasing educational irrelevance.
RE: UCLA made the list? Unbelievable!
4 of the University of California’s made the top 100.
Berekley, UCLA, San Diego and Davis. What’s wrong with UCLA anyway?
RE: Should’ve gone to the University of Minnesota. Same quality of education for a lot less money.
Yes, but I don’t see it in the top 100 /s
Cornell is now considered the most communist university in the country.
Yay! I graduated from number 1, while my brother graduated from number 3 and my sister from number 15. I’ll tease them about it.
Why are you so proud of a family of losers? Just kidding.
Yeah, I think that is more true than people who have gone to East Coast Ivies would care to admit. When my eldest was looking for her undergrad college, she wanted to major in Music Performance (Oboe). There was just no way we could afford the conservatories; but, her piano teacher told us to try Indiana University - Bloomington. We looked into it and, low and behold, it is one of the best Music Schools in the country. Who knew? In the middle of Indiana, great music school. Now, we had to pay out-of-state tuition; but, it was still way cheaper than a conservatory. (BTW, the out-of-state tuition we paid at UI-Bloomington, is now less than the in-state tuition at most of the colleges in WA state.)
I think it might be a better option for a lot of kids to look at which schools have a strong department in the area of study that you want. I know that, locally, the University of Washington in Seattle is where you can get a very good education if you want to get into medicine. My youngest daughter went to Washington State Univ. in the eastern portion of WA state (cow country) and that university has a very strong Communications Dept. (they have long waiting lists) and Architecture is also strong.
Perhaps those books on different colleges that they have should start putting in a section where they list the best colleges by degree program.
Here’s a better way to choose a college, best colleges for free speech.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/09/06/southern-schools-dominate-list-best-colleges-for-free-speech/
Mine, Georgia Institute of Technology, made #88 (blech!)...however, I can remember more than a few times when we beat them (MIT/LL) out on some pretty good jobs...
I would rate this number one. I am being treated by their graduates. They really learn their fields. The other school graduates seem to be idiots.
I worked for Brown and Root for awhile a couple of years after getting out of the Army, we were technical maintenance in a Hercules chemical plant.
I was surprised at how similar the fresh engineers were to second lieutenants, generally they were dumber than dishwater for the first year or two as they had all the theories, but the old techs had to explain to them why they wouldn’t work in the real world.
I was surprised to learn that the older engineers had adopted so many hands on hobbies, it seemed as though they felt the importance of actually involving themselves in hands on challenges, the old timers were much more humble and receptive to practical input than the young guys.
I am surprised my alma mata, Minneapolis community college didn’t make the list. Afterall they were the 1st campus in the US to add foot baths to their bathrooms for their Islamic students.
My experience is similar. However, I’d have killed for the computing and modeling and simulation tools engineers have today.
It’s a balance...before I retired, I had a brilliant engineer (modeling & simulation) destroy the input of a spectrum analzyer because he didn’t realize you can’t sample a 100W signal directly without a directional coupler... $6,000 damage.... it rearranged my thinking and I started having lab classes of a sort with them and the techs...
Accepted by 1, 10, 49
Went to 10 instead of 1 for multiple reasons:
* Excellence of education in Physics and Engineering: even
* Number of undergrads: 10 - ~1,000, 1 - ~4,300
* Cost, with financial aid: 10 - $, 1 - $$$
* Weather: So Cal > Mass
* City: Pasadena > Cambridge
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