Kind of a fun question. I have no idea but would be curious to know what you people think.
Your question is, with respect, ill-posed. Are you interested in teaching excellence, research excellence, or both? At graduate, or undergraduate level? For what subject, or subjects? As an example, in my own field of ultra-cold gases, the University of Colorado at Boulder (via its association with NIST, JILA) is probably the best place for graduate work. I don’t think that Boulder would make it into the top five for general prestige.
Indeed, the most basic comparison would be on quality of undergraduate education, which would be so hard to quantify as to be impossible. It’ll not only depend on subject, but also on individual students and how they learn.
With all that said, I think (though I might be wrong - please correct me if so!) that you’re primarily interested in prestige. I’m not going to attempt a ranking, but I think the top ten would include:
Oxford, Cambridge, the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, Stanford, Harvard, Caltech, MIT.
If you’re only considering sciences, Imperial College in London, Rensslaer Polytechnic Institute and Urbana-Champaign probably get on the list.
None where I’m from, that’s for sure.
Do they have schools in Perth? I thought y’all were just raised with the dogs in the yard 
Based on well rounded academia and research etc…etc… I’d say:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Brown
Dartmouth
Stanford
Bowdoin
MIT
CIT
Oxford
I am trying not to be biased but I still think it would be mostly American universities in the Top 10. They have so much money and prestige that they can buy almost anyone or anything in the world. I am sure that Harvard has offered to charter a med-flight with hookers for Steven Hawking at some point. They didn’t suceed with him but many of absolute top academics do move to the U.S. from their homeland.
When I was in France last year, I read a series of articles in an English speaking paper about how top British Universities were going down the tubes. It said that laws that required parity in funding for all British universities regardless of quality and prestige have had a really bad effect on the top ones like Oxford and Cambridge.
My Top 10 Would Be:
- Harvard (tons of money and prestige)
- Princeton
- Yale
- Oxford
- MIT
- CalTech
- Cambridge
- Stanford
- Ecole Normale Superieure
- Cornell
How about Heidelberg? Leiden? Where do they fall in the grand scheme?
I went to RPI, and I’m flattered that you included it, but I wouldn’t consider it among the top ten in the world. Many of us went there because we didn’t get into MIT. On the other hand, supposedly Indian students who can’t get into one of the Indian Institute of Technology campuses are reduced to attending a lesser school, like MIT or Caltech.
This is a question as much as a comment. I get the feeling that Europeans see universities as a normal extension of their whole school life. Their primary? schooling is fairly difficult and comprehensive and they can extend that same path into a university. There is nothing that special about going to university.
In the U.S., public schools tend to be pretty crappy all the way through high school. That are some great public and private high schools but they aren’t the norm. Instead, students get a huge shock by the increase in difficulty between high school and college. It is like we let students sail along and then we take the ones that make it into a good college and put them through boot camp.
That is the way it was for me when I entered Tulane. However, I was already accustomed to the work load when I went to grad school at Dartmouth.
I think we view our top colleges like major league sports teams. The best fight to make it into them and they are expected to perform once they get there. Once the best get there, the resources and talent available are unbelievable. That model makes are universities the best in the world.
According to this list the top ten are…
1 Harvard
2 Cambridge
3 Stanford Univ
4 California - Berkeley
5 Massachusetts Inst Tech (MIT)
6 California Inst Tech
7 Columbia
8 Princeton
9 University of Chicago
10 Oxford
To me it all depends on what you’re looking for. I think it’s hard to impossible to simply rank colleges like this.
Yeah, usually the “official” rankings are looking for things that are different from what the students are looking for. It completely depends on whose perspective you take.
Besides, WPI kicks RPI’s ass.
Oh, it is ON now, sucka!
Hell, no. WPI is one step above a fog-the-mirror school.
What, in RPG’s?
Completely agree.
DORK FIGHT!!!
Sorry for not replying sooner…ah…I was just asking which are the best in a general all-around sort of way. I kinda doubt anyone can really put their finger on it unless they’ve gone to lots of great schools.
One poster mentioned IIT being way better than Cal Tech and MIT, saying the rejects go to those schools if they can’t get in. No doubt IIT has some very, very bright students, but I’d have to bet that the school doesn’t come close to material and financial resources. But then what the hay do I know about anything.
I was wondering about that too. I don’t know anything about Indian universities but I cannot see how they could exceed CalTech and MIT in their areas of specialty. CalTech and MIT accept students at the very far end of the bell curve. There simply isn’t much more room for another school to exceed them in that way. They also have massive amounts of money that I seriously doubt an Indian school has. CalTech and MIT can generally have their pick of any outstanding researchers in the world including Indians. It generally doesn’t work the other way around. Finally, I read about amazing discoveries made at CalTech, MIT, and other American schools and I hardly ever hear about it for Indian schools. Even if the media was biased on day-to-day news, the so-called great Indian schools should have a mention in all kinds of technology being developed and they usually don’t.