US and UK top 10 Universities/ Colleges with the best reputation comparison!!

Manchester is a really decent University. The research output and quality of teaching that comes out of that place dwarfs some universities.

My pick will be:

1. Cambridge/Oxford
3. UCL
4. Manchester
5. Imperial
6. Bristol
7. Warwick
8. LSE
9. Edinburgh
10. Surrey

Many people tend to pick Oxbridge and UCL because of the historical trend of being top Universities, but Manchester, Imperial and Bristol have similar substance and can compete on the global stage. If you are in doubt, check the ranks of the top 5 Universities on the World Rankings and you will see they are established in the Top 20/30.

Reply 143

Juichiro

18

Never understood this obsession with comparing universities based on subjective notions like "reputation" and "prestige".
Oh well, another day in TSR.

Reply 144

Original post by Wired_1800

Manchester is a really decent University. The research output and quality of teaching that comes out of that place dwarfs some universities.

My pick will be:

1. Cambridge/Oxford
3. UCL
4. Manchester
5. Imperial
6. Bristol
7. Warwick
8. LSE
9. Edinburgh
10. Surrey

Many people tend to pick Oxbridge and UCL because of the historical trend of being top Universities, but Manchester, Imperial and Bristol have similar substance and can compete on the global stage. If you are in doubt, check the ranks of the top 5 Universities on the World Rankings and you will see they are established in the Top 20/30.

Lol why is Manchester that high?

Reply 145

Original post by yl95

Lol why is Manchester that high?

I think the employer rating, general satisfaction of their programmes, entry requirements/standards. Manchester has all of them and more. Besides, it is strong in many of its courses. The ranking tables tend to skew their measurements.

When you look at the other universities, you will find that they are strong in a handful of their specialist programmes such as Engineering/Medicine at Imperial, Economics at LSE and Warwick, Medicine at Edinburgh, Engineering at Bristol.

This is just my opinion. Manchester does not get enough credit for being a really decent university. I also do not have any links with Manchester, so I am using an objective angle.

Reply 146

Original post by Wired_1800

I think the employer rating, general satisfaction of their programmes, entry requirements/standards. Manchester has all of them and more. Besides, it is strong in many of its courses. The ranking tables tend to skew their measurements.

When you look at the other universities, you will find that they are strong in a handful of their specialist programmes such as Engineering/Medicine at Imperial, Economics at LSE and Warwick, Medicine at Edinburgh, Engineering at Bristol.

This is just my opinion. Manchester does not get enough credit for being a really decent university. I also do not have any links with Manchester, so I am using an objective angle.

No way the entrance requirements are higher. Imperial/Oxbridge/UCL/Durham etc's A*A*A/A*AA requirements vs Manchester's generally AAA-ABB? Eh... Employer rating - not even a target uni for the most competitive schemes. While I am speaking from a biased perspective Imperial is not just good at Medicine and Engineering; it also excels in the Natural Sciences (rankings, research etc), I would not place it below Manchester.
And dude UCL not above IC!

Reply 147

SCG99

Original post by yl95

Lol why is Manchester that high?

I'd put Manchester below Imperial, Bristol, LSE, King's, Durham, Warwick, Edinburgh and Nottingham. Imperial is top class for almost all its subjects as is LSE.

Bristol is excellent for engineering, geography, English, law and natural sciences, and is decent at a lot more.

Durham is great for almost all social science subjects.

Warwick is brilliant for most finance subjects, is good for law and is fast building up an excellent reputation for computer science atm.

Edinburgh is the same as Bristol, except it also has a top notch design program.

Nottingham is pretty good for social science subjects.

Employment wise, all these universities are targets and semi targets for IB's and consultancies, targets for law and do really well in engineering and retail as well.

King's, same as Bristol too.

Don't get me wrong, Manchester is a great university with some excellent research, but in terms of course quality it has far more decent programmes than it does excellent one. Its social sciences faculty is distinctly average, and while it has some great engineering and natural science courses, I don't think it has enough of them to be considered better/at par with any of these universities as a whole.

This is a completely subjective opinion obviously, so feel free to disagree.

Reply 148

ImperialKiller

Hello. I am an Imperial student studying Mechanical Engineering, I'm from Canada but as this is a UK vs US thing, I won't bring in the others! These were the top always talked about at the two schools I attended.

Alphabetically Descending:

Bristol
Cambridge
Durham
Edinburgh
Imperial (Booyah)
King's
LSE
Oxford
UCL
Warwick

(Sometimes I heard St Andrews, maybe even York, Manchester and Nottingham, all the other russell groups literally never came up)

Brown
Cornell
Columbia
Caltech
Dartmouth
Harvard
MIT
Penn & Princeton
Stanford
Yale

(Then you also have Berkeley, UCLA)

It was quite the same at every school to be real, and the same stuff is coming up each time on here too!
Peace out.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 149

Original post by yl95

No way the entrance requirements are higher. Imperial/Oxbridge/UCL/Durham etc's A*A*A/A*AA requirements vs Manchester's generally AAA-ABB? Eh... Employer rating - not even a target uni for the most competitive schemes. While I am speaking from a biased perspective Imperial is not just good at Medicine and Engineering; it also excels in the Natural Sciences (rankings, research etc), I would not place it below Manchester.
And dude UCL not above IC!

This is just my opinion. I never commented that Manchester's entry requirements were better than IC or LSE or other universities, I stated that the cumulative qualities of Manchester, in my opinion, makes it a bit better generally than IC or other universities that have a somewhat limited offering of subjects and courses.

This is coming from an unbiased person with no links to Manchester.

Many people tend to use IB and Consultancies as parameters to measure whether Manchester is a target university. I think that this is wrong because not all students at Manchester aim to work in IB or London-centric firms.

I completely agree that Imperial and LSE are fantastic universities, but their limited offerings, though excellent, make their ranking a bit unbalanced. For example, if one university offers 15 courses and is excellent in 12 of them, while another offers 50 courses but is excellent in 25; then the first university has a success rate of 75% while the latter has a mere 50%. This comparison does not state that the latter university offers more courses and is more diverse in its educational setting.

This is just my opinion. I get a bit skeptical to look at tables that put Imperial, LSE, MIT, Caltech as best universities when people know that their offerings is very limited and so they can focus on those. The reason why Oxbridge keep coming top is that they have a very wide course offering and most of their courses are excellent or near-excellent. If they offered limited ones like social sciences at LSE or Natural Sciences/Physical Sciences at Imperial, then I will be a bit worried with their level of prominence.

I think that IC and LSE should be ranked in the courses that they offer, but in general rankings, all universities should be scored across the board.

Just my opinion. Please I do not want to read stuffs like "look at the evidence or the facts!"

Reply 150

Original post by Wired_1800

This is just my opinion. I never commented that Manchester's entry requirements were better than IC or LSE or other universities, I stated that the cumulative qualities of Manchester, in my opinion, makes it a bit better generally than IC or other universities that have a somewhat limited offering of subjects and courses.

This is coming from an unbiased person with no links to Manchester.

Many people tend to use IB and Consultancies as parameters to measure whether Manchester is a target university. I think that this is wrong because not all students at Manchester aim to work in IB or London-centric firms.

I completely agree that Imperial and LSE are fantastic universities, but their limited offerings, though excellent, make their ranking a bit unbalanced. For example, if one university offers 15 courses and is excellent in 12 of them, while another offers 50 courses but is excellent in 25; then the first university has a success rate of 75% while the latter has a mere 50%. This comparison does not state that the latter university offers more courses and is more diverse in its educational setting.

This is just my opinion. I get a bit skeptical to look at tables that put Imperial, LSE, MIT, Caltech as best universities when people know that their offerings is very limited and so they can focus on those. The reason why Oxbridge keep coming top is that they have a very wide course offering and most of their courses are excellent or near-excellent. If they offered limited ones like social sciences at LSE or Natural Sciences/Physical Sciences at Imperial, then I will be a bit worried with their level of prominence.

I think that IC and LSE should be ranked in the courses that they offer, but in general rankings, all universities should be scored across the board.

Just my opinion. Please I do not want to read stuffs like "look at the evidence or the facts!"

Don't know why you don't want people providing evidence; that almost strikes me as ignorant. :l
I would argue that having a larger proportion of courses it's good at means that it is a better uni. Some unis may be good at half their courses but because the other half lets it down, I wouldn't see it as good as the former.

Reply 151

Original post by yl95

Don't know why you don't want people providing evidence; that almost strikes me as ignorant. :l
I would argue that having a larger proportion of courses it's good at means that it is a better uni. Some unis may be good at half their courses but because the other half lets it down, I wouldn't see it as good as the former.

I apologize that you feel my not wanting the evidence appears to be ignorant. My reason is purely based on the very subjective nature of uk and international league tables. If we went into that realm of providing "evidence", the ones that we provide will be biased according to our view. For example, if I want to show you that Imperial is better than Oxford, I will bring up the recent QS World University Rankings, but if I want to show that Oxford is better than Imperial, then I will show a UK based table like THE or the Guardian. Personally, I do not want to go down the route of evidence bashing because some TSR users love that level of discussion. I assure you that I am not ignorant and I am more informed that the average dude.

For your comment about ranking. I think that it is unfair to compare universities with more courses to those with less courses. This is because the one with less courses will obviously be seen as "better" because there is less room for error than the "larger" university. A large university has more courses plus students and will not be flexible enough to provide the best across the board. The only logical option will be for the large university to scrap the low performing courses and focus on their strengths. This will completely revolutionize the education system and introduce specialist institutes such as IC rather than full university with a balanced portfolio.

This is the pressure that many large and decent universities are facing. For example, if one attends Warwick and studies Economics, he is probably at the top-end of academically gifted students on an Economics programme across the country and comparing very closely with Cambridge. However, on the general ranking tables, he will be represented by a University that is barely in the top 5 of all universities because the other courses do not necessarily come up to scratch with Economics or Mathematics at Warwick. This approach pulls Warwick down and it will be best for them to scrap other courses and focus on Economics and Mathematics, so that they can move up on the table.

There are currently moves by major ranking organizations to reform the university ranking criteria to rank purely on subjects. This way it will be better to have a more informed look at a university performance with regard to a particular programme.

Reply 152

Terry Tibbs

19

Original post by yl95

No way the entrance requirements are higher. Imperial/Oxbridge/UCL/Durham etc's A*A*A/A*AA requirements vs Manchester's generally AAA-ABB? Eh... Employer rating - not even a target uni for the most competitive schemes. While I am speaking from a biased perspective Imperial is not just good at Medicine and Engineering; it also excels in the Natural Sciences (rankings, research etc), I would not place it below Manchester.
And dude UCL not above IC!

Lol, you seem to have something against Manchester, don't you?

Reply 153

Original post by Terry Tibbs

Lol, you seem to have something against Manchester, don't you?

Not at all...all I was doing was disagreeing with its ranking on the thread. I applied there.

Reply 154

Original post by yl95

Not at all...all I was doing was disagreeing with its ranking on the thread. I applied there.

You should be a bit more positive about your potential university. Unlike you, I never applied to Manchester.

From what I have read and followed about Manchester, I think that it is really good and should be with the big boys. Unfortunately, the ranking tables skew the results every year and the same crop maintain the top positions (outside of Oxbridge and UCL, which are fantastic institutions).

Reply 155

Original post by Wired_1800

You should be a bit more positive about your potential university. Unlike you, I never applied to Manchester.

From what I have read and followed about Manchester, I think that it is really good and should be with the big boys. Unfortunately, the ranking tables skew the results every year and the same crop maintain the top positions (outside of Oxbridge and UCL, which are fantastic institutions).

I'm already at uni.

Reply 156

Terry Tibbs

19

Original post by yl95

Not at all...all I was doing was disagreeing with its ranking on the thread. I applied there.

You've disagreed multiple times on other threads, so much as to speculate that the only reason it is in the top 5 for entry standards for physics is just due Brian Cox, when it was completely unnecessary to do so. Sounds like you do have something against the uni.

Reply 157

Original post by Terry Tibbs

You've disagreed multiple times on other threads, so much as to speculate that the only reason it is in the top 5 for entry standards for physics is just due Brian Cox, when it was completely unnecessary to do so. Sounds like you do have something against the uni.

You're reading too much into it. The uni has done nothing bad to me so I have nothing against it. I simply expressed my opinions on rankings and you happened to have seen my posts on Manchester. With that logic I must have something against Exeter, Durham, UCL etc because I've disagreed on other unis. I am basically a bored individual in their summer holidays who is killing time. Again the Brian Cox thing was an observation - your choice to take it to offence.

Reply 158

Terry Tibbs

19

Original post by yl95

You're reading too much into it. The uni has done nothing bad to me so I have nothing against it. I simply expressed my opinions on rankings and you happened to have seen my posts on Manchester. With that logic I must have something against Exeter, Durham, UCL etc because I've disagreed on other unis. I am basically a bored individual in their summer holidays who is killing time. Again the Brian Cox thing was an observation - your choice to take it to offence.

And I'm just observing a trend with you - your choice to take it to offence.

Reply 159