UCL Vs. Brown and Cornell

Hi, everyone.
I have a firend who is studying at Cornell University and he think UCL must be better than Cornell or Brown since it is the top 5 in the UK. Although I am considering to study at UCL, I don't think it is true.......
What do u think about this???

Reply 1

sweet_fluffy_nuke

Cornell is far better than UCL.
Only our top 4 universities (Oxbridge, LSE and ICL ) are serious competition for the US's top 20.

Reply 2

Tajel

1

I think your friend gives too much weight to rankings.

Reply 3

sadiqhassan

UCL is big here in Canada, not sure about the US

Personally, I think UCL is as good as Cornell in terms of both education and reputation. However, Cornell>UCL if you plan to live in the US and UCL>Cornell if you plan to live in the UK in terms of job opportunities. I have heard of even LSE grads having a tough time getting jobs in North America

Reply 4

Barzini

1

I chose Warwick over Cornell and Northwestern...because the specific course was ranked very well at warwick (Econ, no. 2 in england, this year no. 3), which is obv better than Cornell's econ program. Cornell's an excellent institution, esp for engineering and the sciences, but less so for economics. Northwestern is probably on par with warwick for econ. So as u can probably figure from my post, it all depends on the subject. And UCL in the UK would probably be on par with Brown and Cornell in the States. HYPSM = Oxbridge, but the advantage would be these is that they are well renowned worldwide as unis in general.

Reply 5

bananamoonbeam

1

UCL is definately > Cornell in the UK. Few people here have heard of Cornell and most have only heard of Brown because of the OC etc. However I am not surprised to learn that in America it works the other way round.

Reply 6

lucho22

13

The quality of undergraduate education in the UK is considered by most academics (I know quite a few here in the UK at Oxbridge and a couple in the US at Columbia) and they all say the same. UK>US for undergrad and US>UK for doctoral studies.

Reply 7

WokSz

17

acolyte

Cornell is far better than UCL.
Only our top 4 universities (Oxbridge, LSE and ICL ) are serious competition for the US's top 20.

This is speculation. No one can actually really compare both countries for undergraduate, as each institution is so different in how they teach.

Reply 8

dismal_laundry

15

bananamoonbeam

UCL is definitely > Cornell in the UK. Few people here have never heard of Cornell and have only heard of Brown because of the OC. However I am not surprised to learn that in America it works the other way round.

General comment: here's hoping that along with increasing internationalisation of education, due recognition of status and relative merit across borders will become more routine. In the end, we work very hard for our qualifications and many of us make considerable sacrifices. Idealistic perhaps, but I sure as hell hope it goes that way.

Reply 9

ic190999

1

Original post by sweet_fluffy_nuke

Cornell is far better than UCL.
Only our top 4 universities (Oxbridge, LSE and ICL ) are serious competition for the US's top 20.

Given that this reply was 14 years ago, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that times were a lot different then.

UCL has been ranked within the Top 20 Best Universities in all the major rankings for years now and is one of the few elite well-rounded Universities in the UK (unlike LSE which specialises in the social sciences and ICL for STEM). UCL also possesses considerably lower Endowment compared to Cornell and by extension, most of the top US universities.

Reply 10

Rishab12

3

Original post by hji1008

Hi, everyone.
I have a firend who is studying at Cornell University and he think UCL must be better than Cornell or Brown since it is the top 5 in the UK. Although I am considering to study at UCL, I don't think it is true.......
What do u think about this???

Honestly depends on where you want to work. If you wish to work in Europe, UK universities are better known. If you wish to work in the US, priority is given to the Ivies. (Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge may be the sole exceptions). If you want to go any deeper, you could try looking at subject rankings, but the metrics used to rank universities rarely precisely reflect the quality of the graduate. Its very general.

I guess you could say top 4-5 universities overall have the highest calibre of student, followed by top 20, 100, 500, so on, but honestly such metrics sometimes add heavy weight to useless factors like male:female ratio, intl student%, student satisfaction, faculty size, nobel laureate numbers.

To sum up Cornell and UCL are both very highly respected within their respective social spheres and cannot be compared objectively, (only subjectively).

In the end rankings are entirely useless, and will be even more so in the coming years as Asian universities start to boast extremely high citation scores, but are still low in rank due to poor intl student percentages for example, (SNU in Korea, IIT in India, Tel Aviv University in Israel are all examples of such)

Reply is 15 years late, but here you go I guess haha

Reply 11

mrbluefox

1

Dude probably graduated, got a job, married and have kids at this point

Reply 12

Habitable Earth

6

As an international applicant, I could say that in Great China regions, UCL reputation is on the same level with Cornell. It is hard to say which is the better. Top students admitted to both may consider factors such as majors and career placements in the local markets, but they are on the same line.

UCL Vs. Brown and Cornell

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