Best Global Universities US News 2025 - 2026
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Anonymous
Only 24% submitted SAT scores and 7% ACT scores on the most recent CDS. Lol. It might not be in the top 75 if they actually looked at scores for everyone. Its 4 year graduation rate is not that impressive. They don’t report to USNWR (suspicious, especially given their history) but their own data would have them tied for 44th. Lots of fifth years. Have to be good with that or really want the co-op. Those earnings are only for kids that received federal student aid. But still $11k less than a school like BC. |
Anonymous
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QS 2026 ranking also released couple of days ago.
https://www.qs.com/insights/articles/qs-world-university-rankings-results/ |
Anonymous
Imperial College at number 2. ETH Zurich at number 7. National University of Singapore at number at 8. University College London at number 9. High school students in America have been waiting with bated breath for this ranking. |
Anonymous
| This ranking is nonsense. |
Anonymous
Within the UK itself, this looks mostly right. A few could move a couple of spots up or down but the order otherwise seems mostly accurate. |
Anonymous
It is really mostly a research ranking. |
Anonymous
But isn’t money the metric? A lot of local billionaires have funneled money into the school and its research departments—and those same billionaires lobby for federal research grants. ICYMI: success breeds success. But that metric is rather meaningless when it comes to your Larla’s degree and career options. |
Anonymous
Is anyone claiming that the global rankings are for undergraduate student’s “degree and career options” though? |
Anonymous
No but on the other thread about this ranking there were people claiming that any ranking not solely focused on those types of things is useless. 
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Anonymous
Again, so the SAT/ACT data is from 2018 when scores were mandatory. Now, tons of more applications from high stat applicants pool. 6-year is industry standard for graduation rate due to considerations such as major change, transfer, study abroad, gap year, 5 year programs, double major, etc. Those earnings data is particularly useful for middle class normal people. Federal aids include any type of Federal loans. Huge portion of middle and upper middle class fall into the category. We don't care about earrings by Obama kid, Trump kid, Bill Gates kid, etc. Rich kids with fancy connections actually skew the data, so it's good thing to eliminate them. Northeastern: $93K Brown: $93K Vanderbilt: $92K UChicago: $92K Rice: $90K Northwestern: $89K WashU: $86K UMich: $84K UCLA: $83K Emory: $80K |
Anonymous
And Pitt coming in at 52! It really is a research powerhouse when you look at the volume of research and amount of NIH funding. This ranking seems to have been heavily influenced by research output. But I like when some of these underdogs, which are really excellent schools, stand out when methods shift (e.g., prestige less heavily weighted). |
Anonymous
Yeah but now very few that get admitted submit scores so the quality has likely fallen substantially. I doubt they are in the top 50 anymore if you had everyone’s scores. 6-year is not “industry standard.” It’s a common metric but so is 4-year. 6-year measures total ability to eventually graduate, 4-year measures ability to finish “on time” which is especially important for many families as school is expensive. Earnings data is skewed by the proportion of kids at each school that are part of the measurement (it varies a lot from school to school) and especially geographic location of grads. Most of the schools you mentioned are sending a larger portion of their kids to areas other than the northeast. |
Anonymous
Northeastern is not an outlier for current TO policy compared to similar level schools and have similar TO ratio. Very top schools started to switch to test required. Other schools will follow that. Few schools switched to test required at similar level so far. US Department of Education uses 6-year rate and USN&WR uses 6-year rate for its ranking. It's de facto industry standard for reasons. Nothing different for Northeastern who wants to gradate in 4 years. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/ranking-criteria-and-weights No data is perfect but the data from the US Department of the Education is the best we have. You can get a good idea. |
Anonymous
Yes, at 24% SAT/7% ACT, Northeastern is more like a 50-100 school than anything else. So in that sense it is not an outlier. Same for its 4 year graduation rate, which has it in the mid-40s (USNWR publishes both: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate). So I guess we agree that Northeastern is indeed similar to “similar-level” schools if referring to schools in the 45-100 range. |
Anonymous
With the 4 year, Villanova is better than MIT which is engineering heavy. That's why they don't use it for the metrics. USN&WR use 6 year in it's ranking calculation. Similar level schools would be BU, BC, Tufts, NYU, LeHigh, URochester, WF. |