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Using international rankings to help choose a Masters or PhD
People love rankings. Even the people who hate rankings love rankings… or so it would seem by the amount of time they spend talking and writing about them. And not just university rankings, but schools, celebrities downloaded, TV shows, hospitals, footballers, rich people – you name it and there has been a ranking of it. Using university rankings to help select a graduate program is now commonplace and can play a valuable role in the decision making process.
Many rankings focus on the more frivolous aspects of the world in which we live and are unlikely to influence your life – which movie you rent or which album you download are ultimately low investment decisions, and if you are misled by a ranking it is unlikely to prove disastrous. When choosing an international Masters degree or PhD program, however, you are taking a big step and one that ought to have a profound influence on your life. In this context, to depend too much on an international ranking of institutions, not programs, that are based on somebody else’s interpretation of what represents quality, would be a grave mistake.
This is not to imply that university rankings should be dismissed entirely, simply that they should be considered at the appropriate stage of the decision-making process and with a complete understanding of what the rankings are evaluating and how the various measures are aggregated to yield an overall relative position. These key principles for the use of rankings in decision-making could be applied in almost any context, but when applied to international rankings of universities, they are crucial.
For use domestically
On a domestic level, university rankings have been in existence for many years, US News & World Report had operated university rankings in the US since 1983, The Times in the UK since the early 90s, and they have evolved in that time to include an impressive number of contributory factors. In some cases they have been able to drive measurement factors in the education sector. The US News & World Report project draws on 18 distinct assessment criteria, but they are different from those considered by The Times. Yet even with such a comprehensive set of measures, often at both an institutional and a subject level, it still remains unlikely that their criteria will perfectly reflect those of every applicant considering either undergraduate or graduate education. Why then does it seem that the most typical usage of rankings seems to be, “I should go to the most highly ranked institution that will admit me”?
The truth is that the rankings should, at best, provide a tool for short listing potential options early in the decision making process – you can’t visit every university, you can’t even spend sufficient time reading prospectuses and visiting websites from every university – you need to narrow the field.
… and internationally
At an international level, this is even more important and even more necessary (as the initial field of options is much greater). International rankings have an additional constraint – they can only measure criteria that are globally accessible – at present there is no dependable international ranking taking into consideration more than six measures. So not only are the people behind the ranking likely to have a different opinion on which factors are more important than others, there are likely to be some that you would consider crucial that they are not measuring at all.
The two most prominent international rankings at present are the THES – QS World University Rankings, originating from the UK and the Academic Ranking of World Universities compiled by a team at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
The criteria for both rankings are different and can be seen in their separate elements in the tables below.
| Criteria | Indicator | Brief Description | Weight |
| Research Quality | Peer Review | Composite score drawn from peer review (which is divided into five subject areas). | 40% |
| Citations per Faculty | Score based on research performance factored against the size of the research body | 20% | |
| Graduate Employability | Recruiter Review | Score based on responses to recruiter survey. | 10% |
| International Outlook | International Faculty | Score based on proportion of international faculty | 5% |
| International Students | Score based on proportion of international students | 5% | |
| Teaching Quality | Student Faculty | Score based on student/faculty ratio | 20% |
University Rankings
I am confuse to join or not , I havenot much information about ranking and other .
I am worrying about future with that .
Should I join or not?
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