In fact, the standards and contents of international university rankings will be constantly revised and supplemented with the development of the times, and it cannot be said that there is no reference value at all. The main thing is that students and parents should learn how to treat rankings correctly. Let's share this topic with you today.
First of all, we should understand the four authoritative rankings of international universities: American News, QS, World Rankings and ARWU.
American news, namely American News and World Report, is updated once a year. This is the most famous ranking of American universities in the world, which is closely related to QS cooperation.
QS is an international higher education consulting company focusing on providing higher education and recruiting graduates. It publishes the annual world university rankings in cooperation with News and World Report and The Sun.
World Rankings, a higher education newspaper published in Britain, cooperates with the famous media Reuters every year to publish the world university rankings in autumn.
ARWU, published once a year by the World-class University Research Center of Shanghai Jiaotong University, originally aims to analyze the position of China's famous universities in the world university system, and has now become the first multi-index global university ranking in the world.
The four academic rankings mainly depend on academic achievements, students and the number of papers cited. Among the top 200 schools in the world, the United States has always been ahead, staying at nearly 90, and the second place in Britain is around 30.
American news is relatively balanced. In addition to peer evaluation and the reputation of the school, we also pay attention to the repetition rate and graduation rate of students, that is, whether they drop out of school or can't finish their studies after six years. It also includes the quality level of the school's admission of new students, judging the proportion of students' training expenses and students' satisfaction with learning.
Therefore, in the top universities in American news, students usually have a great sense of pride and identity with their alma mater, and their satisfaction will be higher. Because its analysis method is the most credible, more than 94% schools will take the initiative to invite this institution to evaluate and make different proportions of financial subsidies according to its ranking.
It is worth mentioning that there are a lot of subjective consciousness hidden in these objective data. For example, if a university's alumni donation increased significantly last year, it may throw away several universities with similar rankings before. The improvement of enrollment quality and the increase of graduates' employment rate seem to represent the success of a school, but in fact this does not represent the success of every student.
If you care about your life at school and the level of your classmates' contacts, when facing two universities with almost the same level, choose the one with the higher news ranking in the United States! Basically, of the four rankings, this one is the most credible.
QS, one of the oldest ranking institutions, is also the school ranking that enterprises like to refer to most. In addition, QS attaches great importance to its satisfaction with international education rankings, which is reflected in its survey of the proportion of international students in China among academic and teaching staff. In contrast, most traditional liberal arts universities are from China, and their ranking will be lower, but this is not necessarily bad, because when the proportion of international students is low, most classes are American, which means that you will become a special one.
As we all know, among international students, China students are the fastest growing. Imagine that if the proportion of international students in China accounts for 80% of the whole program, then more than 60% of the students may be from face of china.
QS's academic research reputation accounts for 40%, and many educators are worried about this imbalance. But in fact, no matter what purpose you want to enter a good university, learning knowledge will benefit you for life, and QS ranking also attaches great importance to the reputation of graduates entering the workplace, which is why enterprises like to watch QS ranking.
If it is for future employment needs, it is right to find a top-ranked QS. At least generally speaking, enterprises will pay more attention to the graduates of QS schools when applying for jobs.
Then, ARWU's ranking focuses on academic and research achievements. Attaching importance to academics not only attaches importance to the citation rate of final papers, but also includes the environmental quality and resources for students to do academics. Pay more attention to the influence of learning environment and academic achievements, while ARWU mostly determines the ranking by the performance and achievements of international scientific research (Nobel Prize and academic awards in this field) and published academic papers. On the other hand, if you are looking forward to your future career development in the industry, this ranking can be used as a reference.
Don't hesitate if you want to advance in the academic field in the future. And ARWU are the rankings you should pay attention to! Maybe the next Nobel Prize winner is you!
Now it's time to talk about how to use these rankings correctly to choose the ideal school.
Make good use of field rankings
Whether you want to enter academia or enterprises, besides excellent diplomas, everyone pays more attention to students' practical ability. Each school can provide different teaching quality and teaching resources for different fields. In addition to the comprehensive ranking, these four rankings will also be classified according to different fields, including teachers and disciplines, to summarize the dominant majors and resource richness provided by different schools. By looking for rankings in various fields, we can use these rankings more objectively.
Personalized search
Each school offers different programs. In addition to finding general projects, remember to search your favorite schools more carefully and set your own needs according to your own goals, so that you can better use the rankings of these academic and professional fields to measure your needs.
Looking for key people
There are two key figures here, the first is from the school, and the second is an example.
A) Usually, schools have career development centers. If you have any questions, please write to me, especially for master's and doctor's questions. Usually, websites don't provide a complete explanation. Or usually, more professional projects will list the names of professors and research topics. If you are really interested or have related questions, actively showing your enthusiasm and ability will make the interview and application more scored.
B) A role model is the kind of person you want to be in the future, such as the CEO or general manager of a company you aspire to. Because in the vast list of schools, it is sometimes really difficult to choose, and the schools you like to use in different industries are not the same. Look for profiles of these key people and find out which school or program they graduated from. When you find that all those people graduated from a school or a professional project, congratulations, you will find your goal.
How to find your own "twilight" in the vast number of schools, and make good use of these rankings to conduct a search, and you will find that everything is not so difficult.