Imperial and Cambridge joint second in top 10 Univerisites in the World

I'm surprised at how close it is between Cambridge, Imperial, Harvard, Oxford and UCL.

Cambridge and Imperial scored 99.4
Harvard scored 99.3
Oxford and UCL scored 99.2

Then a relatively large drop down to Stanford with a score of 98.3

http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2014#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=

I always thought Oxford and Cambridge were about the same. I never knew London imperial college was better than Oxford though! Quite interesting news. I honestly think the ranking system for universities has gone to far such as the 'immigration points' which Denmark do. I believe if you get a first in say a maths degree from a university not in the top 10 it still should be recognised the same as if someone got it from say Cambridge.

This ranking favours British universities I think. Most rankings rank Stanford higher than Cambridge.

It's mostly just how much weight you put on the different factors.

And comparing Harvard with Imperial is probably the dumbest thing ever.

They have almost no subject overlap.

It's like comparing a car with a boat.

How does it favour British universities?

The factors they're using seem pretty good and certainly a lot better than most of the UK rankings which take student satisfaction into account. 40% on surveys of academics, 20% on number of citations, 20% on staff/student ratio and 10% on employer surveys seems reasonable imo. Not too sure about the remaining 10% looking at no. of internationals but its better than student satisfaction.

Even though the rankings favour my universities a lot, I must say that table is pretty crap.

It's better than Oxford at a few things (engineering, etc). Obviously not at things like Literature, because Imperial doesn't even have Literature.

That's why it doesn't really make sense to rank universities "generally". There is no meaningful way to do it. They do it because people want to see it, but it doesn't really mean anything.

Subject rankings are much better, but still quite debatable.

Why does this always come up on TSR, yet no-one actually gives any explanation as to why this is so. Will you be the first person to justify why Cambridge engineering is better than Oxford's (I'm geuinely interested here)?

I don't go to either Cambridge or Oxford (will be going to Imperial in 2 weeks), so I'm probably not the best person to ask. But as a postgrad, the most important things I look for are the university's output of high quality research in the areas I am interested in, since that usually correlates with expertise among the university's professors in that area.

For artificial intelligence as an example (since that's what I am most familiar with), Cambridge is much more active and has a well-established group of AI researchers with extensive research in many areas of AI. It was also home to Alan Turing, father of AI and much of modern computer science.

At the PG level, usually you would have a pretty good idea of how good universities are without having to rely on things like rankings (which mean very little), just by reading publications in that field. Some university names just come up again and again.

Oxford is great in many fields I am sure, but I am equally sure that Cambridge and Imperial are better at some other fields.

Of course, every field needs to be looked at independently. That's why even subject rankings don't make too much sense, and general university rankings are even worse and essentially BS.

Yes, but then you're essentially basing your opinion on how good a department is on the basis of how well known they are in a subsection of a specialisation of engineering. Granted, I thought you were referring to undergrad courses, since rankings are obviously even more ridiculous at the post-graduate level when it's all about how a certain area performs and who your supervisor is. From having worked at Oxford's engineering department last year, all the "big names" and heavy research producers in the department are within electronic engineering (photonics) and civil.

EDIT: Oh, and medical as well.

Why is that?

Why does this always come up on TSR, yet no-one actually gives any explanation as to why this is so. Will you be the first person to justify why Cambridge engineering is better than Oxford's (I'm geuinely interested here)?

I always thought Oxford and Cambridge were about the same. I never knew London imperial college was better than Oxford though! Quite interesting news. I honestly think the ranking system for universities has gone to far such as the 'immigration points' which Denmark do. I believe if you get a first in say a maths degree from a university not in the top 10 it still should be recognised the same as if someone got it from say Cambridge.

I just asked someone else that question not long ago.

It's an assertion that's repeated a lot on TSR (often from people not in the engineering field), and I'm interested in hearing why. Purely from a personal interest; I attended neither Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial.

Last time I posted an opinion on ICL, I got carded.

Lol, I'll be going to Imperial in two weeks and a bit but this is BS.