Monday, October 19, 2009

NUS still at #30 while NTU continues to fall

National University of Singapore retained it's position in the world rankings this time around - great news for the university and its students!

Harvard is #1 as usual, while my favourite, Princeton, is still at #8. Australian National University is at #17 now and even McGill is doing decently, at #18. Brown, an ivy league, is now below NUS (at #31)!

The major challenger of NUS in the university education market in Singapore, Nanyang Technological University has fallen further down to #73 - surely there must be something they're not doing right. But at the same time, they must be doing something right since they haven't had a significant drop in the past 4 years or so (it was at #61 in 2006). However, when top schools like Purdue are hovering at #87, Singapore universities should be content with what they got.

But what I learnt after making my previous post on university rankings is that they don't really represent all that a university has to offer. They focus a lot on research publications by the universities, which is why top schools continue to retain their top positions because of all the Nobel prizes they have accumulated in the past couple of centuries (I'm exaggerating!). And then of course, the results are naturally skewed towards US universities, no matter how hard they try to remove the bias.

Needless to say, I am glad my university has such achievements that I can boast about.