In Scotland, the most prestigious universities would be St Andrews and Edinburgh, followed by Glasgow and Aberdeen. I'm starting university in September, and if I get good enough results, then I'll go to St Andrews. Otherwise I'll go to Aberdeen.
In addition to Oxford and Cambridge, the other most prestigious universities in England would be Durham, Bristol, and some of the London ones, like King's College London, University College London, London School of Economics etc.
If you're Afrikaans, University of Stellenbosch. If you're not Afrikaans, I guess it would be the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Or perhaps Rhodes University in Grahamstown. _________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
I'm going to the University of Utrecht after summer. :D
Incidentally, I actually considered applying there myself.
Leiden apparently has the largest department for languages and linguistics in Europe. I'm going to university to study French, German and Linguistics in St Andrews, Scotland, but I often imagine that I might consider going to Leiden if I were to do an MPhil or a PhD afterwards.
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 8:15 pm Post subject: Re: The Most Prestigious Universities in your country
Porthos wrote:
Some that come to mind in my country are:
Princeton
Yale
Harvard
Stanford
Columbia
Brown
Or elsewhere,:
Oxford
Cambridge
I'd add MIT, CalTech, and the University of Pennsylvania to that first list, Porthos. UPenn has the premier business school in the country, Wharton. _________________ "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." ---- Groucho Marx
There are only three universities in town, all with relatively short histories. The oldest university is only able to trace its foundation to 1901 when it started out as a medical school called the King Edward VII Medical College. It later evolved to become the medicine faculty of a newly established university called NUS (National University of Singapore).
My university was founded in 1955 as a Chinese language university catering to the overseas Chinese community in South-East Asia. Well, demand for Chinese language instruction outside China was always slack so the university was forced to teach in English from the 1970s onwards. Honestly, I would not say that NTU (Nanyang Technological University) is prestigious as it is virtually an unknown entity outside Asia. However, I am rather proud of the business faculty of which I belong to. Its MBA programme is rated the top in Asia although its rankings suddenly fall to the 30th odd position when compared globally.
By and large, the most prestigious universities are traditionally the ones that the best and the brightest go to - Oxbridge or the Ivy League universities in america. All our Prime Ministers have been Cambridge men. I think Oxbridge has educated half our cabinet alone. Other universities which are renowed here are Imperial, Durham, LSE as well as Edinburgh. I also have many friends who are currently in America: two of them are in Johns Hopkins, one at UC Berkeley and another at University of Chicago.
Australian universities are often under-rated here. They are very good but there is an erroneous perception here that they are the 'dumping ground' of Singaporean students who are unable to make the grade in local universities. More often than not, this stems from a draconian second language policy which the local unis used to enforce as a criterion for admission: a pass in a second language. But Australian universities which command prestige here would definitely include the likes of Monash, Melbourne, New South Wales as well as UWA.
There is a strong bias in favour of universities from the English-speaking world. Most Singaporeans are unaware of the Grandes Ecoles of France and when I pointed out to them their strong academic tradition, they'd always ask if any French university has made it to the top 50 rankings. Of course, playing the numbers game is not a true gauge of measuring the worth of any academic institution, but many people here apparently agree with Lord Kelvin when he said that if you cannot measure something, then what you know must be of a meagre kind.
In short, this is the 'prestige table' in the minds of most Singaporeans, the sort that'd elicit wows from any prospective employers:
1. Oxford or Cambridge - it doesn't matter
2. Havard/MIT/Yale/Princeton/etc, etc. As long as it is Ivy League, it doesn't matter.
3. Berkeley, Caltech, Stanford, Chicago, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, etc, etc. The elite american universities without necessarily being Ivy League.
4. LSE/Imperial/Queen Mary/Edinburgh/Glasgow/London/Durham, etc. The top British universities that are not Oxbridge
5. Local universities
6. Australian universities
7. Everywhere else
I hasten to add that many Australian universities are in fact better than local ones. It is just that they have a more relaxed admissions policy which has sullied their reputation in the eyes of many misinformed Singaporeans. For example, I know of people who were automatically rejected for the medicine faculty here but who were able to study medicine in Australia.
PS: I was wondering if it's true, but I was told that Asians actually make up a majority in most of the UC schools, especially Berkeley where they make up over 60% of the school population. If that is true, where do the whites, blacks and Hispanics go to study? The Waspish institutions of Yale and Princeton? _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
[/quote]PS: I was wondering if it's true, but I was told that Asians actually make up a majority in most of the UC schools, especially Berkeley where they make up over 60% of the school population. If that is true, where do the whites, blacks and Hispanics go to study? The Waspish institutions of Yale and Princeton?
[quote]
Lol, I don't think that's an accurate statistic, but it is true that a very high percentage of Asian-Americans attend university. An edcuation is highly valued in the Asian culture, and most successful Asian parents make damn sure their kids graduate from college, and a good one at that! Lol. There's a stereotype here of Asians as being very studious, entrepeneurial people, which often seems to be true for the Asian immigrant population.
If that is true, where do the whites, blacks and Hispanics go to study? The Waspish institutions of Yale and Princeton?
Probably the vast majority of students anywhere in the US stay out of Ivy League or other top schools simply because the tuition is prohibitively expensive. Most people probably go to state schools, where tuition is partially subsidized.
the top schools for hispanics include UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego (where Kirk went), Harvard, Rice, Stanford, MIT (where my best friend's cousin, a hispanic, got her engineering degree, and now makes ridiculous money I can't even dream of!), University of Texas - Austin, and others. Most have a hispanic student population of 10-15%, which is very close to the actual percentage in the general US population. _________________ An apple a day....
because the tuition is prohibitively expensive. Most people probably go to state schools, where tuition is partially subsidized.
That is probably why these schools are still so good. Research is an onerously expensive affair and you cannot produce Nobel laureates by subsisting on the margins. _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
1. Uniwesytet Warszawski (University of Warsaw)
2. Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the oldest one - founded in 1364)
3. Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań)
4. Szkoła Główna Handlowa (Warsaw School of Economics)
5. Politechnika Warszawska (Warsaw University of Technology)
6. Uniwersytet Wrocławski (University of Wrocław)
7. Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza (AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków)
8. Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń)
9. Politechnika Wrocławska (Wrocław University of Technology)
10. Szkoła Główna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego (Warsaw Agricultural University)
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