Does you refer the ranking to choose grad schools?

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rizard
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Mar 30, 2017 7:48 pm

Does you refer the ranking to choose grad schools?

Post by rizard » Fri Jul 21, 2017 11:10 am

Hi! I am a student from Japan.

I want to study in EU or USA.

Actually, I want to figure out good Universities based on research outcomes and other things have to do with research.

(I already have finished to select my dream school based on my research interest. However, I want to compare a University with other one if my dream schools have conducted the same topic.)

I heard that QS has own factors to evaluate world Universities but one of the factors contains reputation, not directly shows research capability.

So..Among QS,THE, ARWU, and US NEWS, Which ranking is the most reliable to judge research ability of a University?

TakeruK
Posts: 941
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2012 3:05 pm

Re: Does you refer the ranking to choose grad schools?

Post by TakeruK » Fri Jul 21, 2017 12:03 pm

rizard wrote:Hi! I am a student from Japan.

I want to study in EU or USA.

Actually, I want to figure out good Universities based on research outcomes and other things have to do with research.

(I already have finished to select my dream school based on my research interest. However, I want to compare a University with other one if my dream schools have conducted the same topic.)

I heard that QS has own factors to evaluate world Universities but one of the factors contains reputation, not directly shows research capability.

So..Among QS,THE, ARWU, and US NEWS, Which ranking is the most reliable to judge research ability of a University?
I don't know what QS and ARWU are, but I am guessing they are similar things to US NEWS rankings and THE.

I do not know every little detail of how they make the rankings, but reputation score is supposed to be related to research ability. Often, these rankings ask other experts in the field to provide their impressions of the school's research ability, and that goes into the reputation score.

However, this is not a very good way to pick schools at all. First of all, these rankings are not really very objective and they aren't really based on sound criteria. Second, these rankings are sometimes based on the **entire** school or in some cases entire departments/fields. However, for graduate study, in terms of reputation, the most important part is the reputation for the specific topic you want to study, not the department or the school's overall reputation.

That said, reputation is still somewhat important, depending on what you want to do afterwards. To be clear, I am not saying that all school "brand names" are the same. But I am saying that when you are selecting schools, there are a lot of other important factors that should be considered first, such as research fit (as you have already done), as well as personality fit with your advisor, department and where you're living.

A high ranking isn't very well correlated with your research outcomes. The small correlation/connection would be for things like very famous schools (e.g. Harvard) would have a lot of money overall, and this might mean more resources for you. But this is only helpful if you also have the other, more important, factors considered.



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