Most international students will refer to a variety of rankings, and the same university will sometimes be much different in different ranking lists, which has brought trouble to the students' school selection, is there no university in each list of positions in the Diaoyutai? No. So for ordinary students, how to view these four ranking lists? We need to understand how the various rankings work.
QS World University Rankings
QS World University Rankings are the annual World University Rankings published by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS, Chinese Quaquarelli Symonds), an international education market consultancy in the United Kingdom. Since 2010, the list has been published independently every summer (before 2010 in collaboration with THE).
The ranking mechanism of QS is like this ↓
Academic Reputation 40%
Faculty/Student Ratio 20%
Citations per faculty 20%
Global Employer Reputation 10% (Highlights of the QS Ranking Mechanism)
International Faculty Ratio 50%
International Student Ratio 5%
As you can see, there are two items about "Reputation": Academic Reputation & Global Employer Reputation, which together account for 50% of the overall weight of the evaluation. It shows that QS attaches great importance to the evaluation of others, which can be understood as the concept of QS is biased towards non-quantitative evaluation rankings. In addition, as far as the Global Employer Reputation is concerned, only QS is quoted in the four authoritative rankings, so for most of the students who face self-employment after graduation, they should take a more look at QS when considering the ranking of institutions, because the QS ranking already includes the employer's recognition of the school graduates, that is, the question that the students are worried about: "If I look for a job after graduation, will the employer HR not recognize my school?" ”
In addition, by the way, let's explain what other indicators represent.
Faculty/Student Ratio, the higher the teacher-student ratio, the better, if the ratio is below 1:20, then basically the teacher will be difficult to take care of the learning situation of each student. The teacher-student ratio factor in the QS rankings accounts for 20% of the weight, which is a very unfavorable factor for public school rankings, because the teacher-student ratio in kilometer schools is generally low. In the QS ranking, UCL is nearly 40 places higher than the LSE ranking, but students know that London Politics and Economics is the top university of arts and business, the reason is that compared with UCL, the LSE teacher-student ratio is low, coupled with the imperfect professional setting, the number of papers is not as good as that of comprehensive universities. In the United States, liberal arts colleges are small but fine schools, they attach great importance to the teacher-student ratio, the ratio is generally more than 1:10, in order to ensure that the learning situation of each student is fully taken care of, thereby improving the quality of teaching. And the ratio of teachers and students to top schools is even higher, Harvard 1:7, Yale 1:6, Princeton 1:5...
Citations per faculty, general academic evaluation has two indicators: 1. whether the paper is included in the top foreign search database; 2. The number of citations of the paper. So QS chose one of these two evaluation indicators: the number of citations, to determine the scientific research level of the school's faculty. It should be noted that this citation number is not a simple value like the number of clicks once, two or three times, it also has an evaluation mechanism, which will eventually appear in the form of an index, and the evaluation mechanism of this index will not be said here, in short, the higher the better.
The International Faculty Ratio and the International Student Ratio, these two indicators actually represent the degree of internationalization of the school, which is related to many interests and is also controllable by the country. This internationalization problem is actually of little significance to students who are engaged in research, that is, postgraduate students, but it is still of certain significance to undergraduates. However, I personally believe that these two points and the quality of school scientific research and education are not absolutely positive relationships. Of course, universities with a relatively high degree of internationalization will experience different cultures and academic exchanges will be more extensive, but they do not directly represent the level of the school, especially science and engineering. For example, Chestnut, Germany, many top schools, but the QS ranking is not very high, a very important reason is the school's internationalization problem, because the German high-end majors are definitely taught in German, compared to English, the German penetration rate is not so extensive, so the International Faculty Ratio and the International Student Ratio are relatively low, dragging the school's QS ranking behind. But who cares?
THE (Times Higher Education World University Rankings)
THE ranks more than 10 of the world's best universities (involving nearly 90 countries and regions) in five categories, including teaching, research, paper citation, internationalization, and industrial revenue. To ensure fairness and transparency in the rankings, it is independently audited by PwC.
The ranking mechanism of THE is like this ↓
Teaching (the learning environment) 30%
Citations (research influence) 30%
Research (volume, income and reputation) 30%
Reputation survey 18%
Reputation survey 15%
International outlook (staff, students, research) 7.5%
Doctorates-awarded-to-academic-staff ratio 6%
Research income 6%
Research productivity 6%
Staff-to-student ratio 4.5%
Doctorate-to-bachelor's ratio 2.25%
Institutional income 2.25%
Proportion of international students 2.5%
Proportion of international staff 2.5%
International collaboration 2.5%
Industry income (knowledge transfer) 2.5%
Compared with QS, third-party evaluation is not so important in the THE ranking, focusing on the level of scientific research, and tends to use scientific research revenues rather than scientific research evaluations to judge the scientific research level of the school. In addition, Teaching has a 30% share in THE, which has certain significance for undergraduates, and for degrees after master's degrees, Teaching does not account for a lot in the learning process, mostly Research, but fortunately, Research (volume, income and reputation) also accounts for 30% of the weight. It is worth pointing out that institutions in English-speaking countries rank high in THE, and an important influencing factor is that THE has increased the weight of citations in papers relatively high, 30%, and 20% in QS. This is a positive for English-speaking countries, as there is a potential advantage to English papers being cited more often than smaller languages. Therefore, students should carefully refer to THE rankings when applying to universities in non-English-speaking countries. At the same time, while referring to the QS rankings, THE is a good reference list if you want to further consider the academic performance of the school.
U.S. News World University Rankings
U.S. News World University Rankings (U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities Rankings) by U.S. News & World Report) released, based on more than ten indicators such as the academic level of universities, international reputation and so on to obtain the world's best universities rankings.
U.S. News's ranking mechanism is like this ↓
Global Research Reputation 12.5%
Regional Research Reputation 12.5%
Number of publications in the top 10% most cited 12.5%
Publications 10%
Ratio of the number of top 10% most cited publications to total publications 10%
Standardized Paper Citation Impact Index 10%
Total Citations 7.5%
国际合作 5%（It shows how international the research papers are compared with the country in which the institution is based）
Ratio of the number of published papers containing international authors to the total number of 5%
In the representative field (usually 22 representative research areas), the number of articles most cited in the top 1% 5%
In the representative field (usually 22 representative research areas), the ratio of the number of most cited top 1% articles to the total number of articles 5%
Books 2.5%
Academic Conferences 2.5%
U.S. News. Similar to a comprehensive expression of QS and THE (but the Interest-oriented of the United States), it attaches importance to both the reputation of the school, that is, the evaluation, and the scientific research results, and the number of paper publications and citations occupies a higher weight. Therefore, for students who love scientific research, especially science and engineering, considering the U.S. News list can largely understand the depth of their majors in the future, if the future career planning is a reference for scientific research U.S. News. That's the point. In addition, because it is the United States list, so naturally American institutions are dominant in this list, for students applying to study in the United States, it is not impossible to refer directly to U.S. News.
ARWU Academic Ranking of World Universities
ShanghaiRanking's Academic Ranking of World Universities, or ARWU for short, is published by the World-Class University Research Center of the Institute of Higher Education (formerly the Institute of Higher Education) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It is the world's first comprehensive global university ranking.
ARWU's ranking mechanism is like this ↓
20% of Nobel and Fields Medal-winning teachers
The number of most cited scientists by discipline 20%
20% of papers published in Nature and Science
Number of papers included in the Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index 20%
10% of Nobel and Fields Medal alumni
The mean score (PCP) of the above five indicators for full-time teachers is 10%
It can be seen that soft science is a pure academic list, with 100% academic factors, unlike QS and U.S. News's about 40% academic factors, and THE's about 60% academic factors. This list evaluation method is relatively simple and rude, that is, to see international awards and scientific research results, and are quantifiable data, several awards are several times, published a few papers is a few, not ambiguous. Therefore, if you simply consider academics, do not consider employment, economic factors and other issues, ARWU can be said to be the most objective of the four lists. However, here's the problem. Academic evaluation, of course, is indispensable to the number of papers, but the number of papers published in science and engineering is naturally more than the liberal arts, so to put it bluntly, the colleges and universities with strong science and engineering disciplines are taking advantage of ARWU, at least the number is cheaper, so if it is a liberal arts student, it is also more interested in research, and it is more suitable for ARWU to refer to THE.
summary:
These four lists have their own emphases, depending on the needs of students. For purely academic students, please look at ARWU, followed by THE, U.S. News, QS; consider the issue of graduation employment, see QS, followed by THE, U.S. News, ARWU. In addition, if you plan to study abroad after local employment, go to the United States first to see U.S. News, go to the United Kingdom or Europe first look at QS and THE, want to return to china for employment, U.S. News, THE, ARWU, QS can be, depending on which country you studied in, the general HR knows that you are back from the United States, just use U.S. News to see you, Commonwealth countries or Europe back, just use QS or THE to see you, anyway, one of the four lists, After all, everyone on the list will say that their school is good, and they all represent the interests of their respective countries and related organizations and groups. There is also a kind of domestic enterprise is directly listed a list, at this time do not have to care about the list, there is a play in your school, there is no basic drama, if you aim at a certain enterprise before studying abroad, you may wish to look at the list of colleges and universities where this enterprise recruits returnees in advance, and refer to its list to apply for schools on the line.
In fact, no list is perfect, because everyone cares about different things, and the purpose of everyone studying abroad is different, so it is appropriate to refer to the list, and in the end, according to their actual situation, they must listen to their own inner choices. Studying abroad is just a journey in your life, as long as it matches your life route, it will be the best choice.
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