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Undergrad universities of the 2015 Physics Nobel Prize winners

Dalhousie University (in Canada)
Saitama University (in Japan)

The average TSR "Russell Yoonay" student or graduate would have bet their life savings that they're smarter than either of the two winners. Yes, even the ones who do History, English Literature, or Psychology.

Discuss.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 1

nulli tertius

Original post by throwawayijd

The literature winner attended Belarusian State University and as I type this isn't even on their distinguished alumni list on Wikipedia.

Reply 2

Okorange

First off, not every country thinks the way Brits think ranking their universities. In Canada, location and program specialty is the most important.

Canada is a big country and its universities are all basically the same, someone from the East Coast is going to attend an East Coast uni and someone from Ontario is going to attend an Ontario uni.

The truly successful people in this world often go to their local university for undergrad and only go to top research universities for their postgrads because that is where the research is.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 3

WokSz

Original post by Okorange

The truly successful people in this world often go to their local university for undergrad and only go to top research universities for their postgrads because that is where the research is.

I don't fully agree with this statement, but I see your point.

OP: As Okorange said, not all countries rank their Universities in the same way that the U.K. or the U.S. do. In Switzerland, for example, there are certain institutions which have better research specialisms (e.g. EPFL) but there is no ranking system per se.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 4

punctuation

Original post by throwawayijd

Dal (Dalhousie) is well-ranked in Canada. (equivalent to a RG uni within the UK)

Reply 5

Okorange

Original post by punctuation

Dal (Dalhousie) is well-ranked in Canada. (equivalent to a RG uni within the UK)

I would say Dal is the main research uni on the East Coast. Also just like Switzerland the world rankings don't represent how people choose universities in Canada. Different schools also are known for different subjects which is how people generally choose.

as an example, Waterloo and Toronto are known for Engineering, McMaster, Toronto and McGill are known for Medicine and Health Sciences, Toronto and Osgoode are known for Law, Western and Queens are known for Business. Generally, most undergraduate programs in Canada are very easy to get into with the exception of a few specific programs (BHSc at McMaster, Eng Sci at UofT, HBA at Western or B.Com. at Queens etc)

Generally these specializations are based on some evidence. For example, Silicon Valley takes more students from Waterloo than any other university in the world, and Waterloo runs the largest co-op program in North America. McMaster is really well known for inventing problem based learning and the multiple mini interview which are in use by a huge number of medical schools around the world and Osgoode Hall is known along with UofT for producing most of the supreme court justices, politicians etc. Western and Queens have some of the highest starting salaries and send more people to IB than any other Canadian school. The rankings often show this to be true as well, while many of these unis aren't ranked as well on the world rankings, most will be well ranked on the subject rankings or are at least well known in the media or among the local population.