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

Also is this a list according to you or some rankings, survey etc?


Can't talk about the ten most reputable US universities and not include Stanford, Chicago and Berkeley. Dartmouth and Brown are great but indeed borrow very heavily from their Ivy League affiliation which tends to portray them in a far exaggerated standing than they truly deserve though Tuck Business School and both medical schools are highly reputable.

I would say the top ten in the US considering both undergrad, postgrad, national and global and peer/employer review rankings are (in no order):

1) Harvard
2) MIT
3) Stanford
4) Yale
5) Princeton
6)Caltech
7) Columbia
8) Pennsylvania
9) Chicago
10) Berkeley

But tbh it should really be a top 15 to include Dartmouth, Brown, UCLA, Duke, Michigan or 17 for Northwestern and Georgetown.


In the UK you are pretty much accurate though I would inclined to remove Durham from the list in favour Manchester. The former is great for undergrad but the latter has a far stronger global reputation even here in the US and in Asia. People on TSR seem to really been keen on Durham when in fairness except for a handful of undergraduate courses, it's really nothing special and if anything gets the attention because it's an old-ish university with a collegiate system like Oxbridge and hence is paraded around as some "Oxbridge lite" college.


Best 10 in the UK all rankings and reviews considered (in no order):

1) Cambridge
2) Oxford
3) Imperial
4) LSE
5) UCL
6) King's College London
7) Edinburgh
8) Bristol
9) Manchester
10) Warwick

Would be tempted to include Glasgow, Nottingham, Birmingham. The rest of the Russell Groups are really quite insignificant in a global standing. St Andrew's is great for undergrad and certain humanities subjects and of course borrows heavily from the fact a certain Prince went there.

Oh you didn't remove the stuff about Durham, you just juggled it around. What is Manchester better at than Durham?

Would agree with your UK list, but don't know much about US universities/colleges - from what I hear talked about I would put MIT slightly higher.

On a separate note - I've just finished my UG in maths at Warwick, are you looking forward to starting?

She did say the list wasn't in order. If it was you'd be hard pressed to rank MIT below 2.

Ah I overlooked that! Never mind! Out of interest, what makes you think about putting Birmingham in top 10 for the UK?

Birmingham a large, civic university which is strong across most departments, good research endowment, all round solid institution and has a good reputation outside of the UK. I wouldn't put it in the top 10 but do regard it higher than St Andrew's and Durham globally.

In most of the top subjects/programmes e.g. Medicine/Science, Engineering, Business etc. Manchester by far has a bigger global reputation than Durham.

Also take a look at lists of Nobel Laureate affiliations etc, Manchester has the 4th highest number in the UK, more than Imperial, Michigan, Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, UCLA, UTokyo, UKyoto all of whom are world-class institutions.

To me:



Outside of US/UK -
1. McGill
2. Toronto
3. ANU
4. Sydney
5. Tokyo
6. Tsinghua Uni
7. Peking Uni
8. HKU
9. NUS
10. Melbourne

Would agree with your UK list, but don't know much about US universities/colleges - from what I hear talked about I would put MIT slightly higher.

On a separate note - I've just finished my UG in maths at Warwick, are you looking forward to starting?

If those are in order I would put UTokyo top of that list and I would have included UKyoto too. In fact both of those at the top. Toronto above McGill, wouldn't include Sydney or Melbourne or Peking. Would have included ETH Zurich and UCopenhagen.

Could make a case for Trinity College Dublin which does enjoy a high reputation but that is mainly from history/the past given it really lacks serious research funds to impose itself on global rankings.


Waseda is another I could argue on behalf but beyond Business Studies it's tricky. Keio is another.

Do you have anything to back up the assertion that Manchester has the better courses for the most in-demand subjects? In most of the mainstream rankings, Durham isn't mentioned for Medicine or Engineering. For business, Durham is ranked higher and even for the a course I thought was better at Manchester, physics, it is ranker higher at Durham than Manchester (with both higher standard entry and higher rate of employment after (which is unreliable but still)).

The whole thing seems to predicated upon global prestige, which is one thing. However, OP asked simply which are the top 10 unis. It's quite myopic, I daresay, to leave Durham out of the top 10.

Durham does offer Medicine in collaboration with Newcastle I believe. MBS certainly has a much higher reputation outside of the UK than DBS.

I assumed the point of this was discuss the top UK universities when considering all factors including domestic and global reputation and even then Manchester would edge out Durham. Durham has for some reason been moulded into this "Oxbridge Rejects" dumping ground which has over-inflated the average grades of entering students and paints a fake picture of the university's standing in the UK and beyond. It's a great university but not a world beater. Heck I wouldn't say Manchester is a world beater. By that I mean universities which are truly world class, known everywhere as amongst the best in that respective country and represent high academic standards and high quality graduates. The only UK universities that can claim that are Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and LSE to be honest. UCL just falls short as does Edinburgh.

The rest are all pretty good but nothing special like Ivy League special.