This looks potentially very helpful to (foreign) students, thanks for setting this up!
If you have a moment, I would be curious to hear your reasoning on why this is limited to US & UK universities only. I understand that for many students, their best choice is to study in the US or UK, but for many other students other universities might be a better choice, and this limitation would still bias them towards UK & US universities.
In addition, there might more be cost-effective opportunities elsewhere, given that most other universities are a lot cheaper than those in US & UK. For example, the same grant that funds one student’s tuition fee at Brown university ($76000/year) could fund up to four students to live and study at ETH Zurich (#8 in the QS world university ranking, expensive city but only $1200/year tuition fee).
The main reason is simply that it so happens that most of the very top universities are based either in the UK or the US. (The fact that ETH Zurich is the only non-UK/US university that is in the top-20 on both the QS and Times Higher Education rankings partly reflects this, although my sense is that these rankings have some pretty serious limitations and should be taken with a major pinch of salt.) I also think there are additional benefits associated with attending university in the UK/US, including in terms of opening up career opportunities in the English-speaking world.
I agree that ETH has some things going for it and including it might well have been a reasonable choice, although my impression is that its teaching language at the undergraduate level is German, which means that it’s not really a relevant option for the vast majority of potential applicants.
In general, the decisions about which universities to include involved a number of debatable judgement calls, so I think there is a decent amount of room for reasonable disagreement on this topic.
I think that ETH Zurich is a particularly good example since it’s one place below Imperial. Not sure I’d be convinced of this argument if it was #15, say.
Do you want to see a write up by me, not the OP, that gives some structure/rationalization/justification about why this set of universities was chosen?
This is an awkward subject and I think it’s unlikely that you will get a verbose response.
I am worried that there will be a lack of response, and this might be create a perception about the objective value of candidates outside this set of universities, despite these beliefs not actually being held strongly by anyone.
Instead of this situation, I’d rather produce a balanced write up, that can still be be kicked around (and maybe get explicitly stomped on by the OP).
Agreed. There are top-ranked universities in other countries. Additionally, $X might allow 5 students to attend a good university, or 1 student to attend a great university. I’d suggest learning toward a more “diversified” model in which more students receive funding (a larger number of “bets” are taken).
I see, then technically one student’s tuition at Brown could fund 56 people’s tuitions at ETH Zurich? And I assume living costs are expensive in both U.S. universities and Zurich, so the living costs should cancel out?
Why only US & UK universities?
This looks potentially very helpful to (foreign) students, thanks for setting this up!
If you have a moment, I would be curious to hear your reasoning on why this is limited to US & UK universities only. I understand that for many students, their best choice is to study in the US or UK, but for many other students other universities might be a better choice, and this limitation would still bias them towards UK & US universities.
In addition, there might more be cost-effective opportunities elsewhere, given that most other universities are a lot cheaper than those in US & UK. For example, the same grant that funds one student’s tuition fee at Brown university ($76000/year) could fund up to four students to live and study at ETH Zurich (#8 in the QS world university ranking, expensive city but only $1200/year tuition fee).
The main reason is simply that it so happens that most of the very top universities are based either in the UK or the US. (The fact that ETH Zurich is the only non-UK/US university that is in the top-20 on both the QS and Times Higher Education rankings partly reflects this, although my sense is that these rankings have some pretty serious limitations and should be taken with a major pinch of salt.) I also think there are additional benefits associated with attending university in the UK/US, including in terms of opening up career opportunities in the English-speaking world.
I agree that ETH has some things going for it and including it might well have been a reasonable choice, although my impression is that its teaching language at the undergraduate level is German, which means that it’s not really a relevant option for the vast majority of potential applicants.
In general, the decisions about which universities to include involved a number of debatable judgement calls, so I think there is a decent amount of room for reasonable disagreement on this topic.
I think that ETH Zurich is a particularly good example since it’s one place below Imperial. Not sure I’d be convinced of this argument if it was #15, say.
Do you want to see a write up by me, not the OP, that gives some structure/rationalization/justification about why this set of universities was chosen?
This is an awkward subject and I think it’s unlikely that you will get a verbose response.
I am worried that there will be a lack of response, and this might be create a perception about the objective value of candidates outside this set of universities, despite these beliefs not actually being held strongly by anyone.
Instead of this situation, I’d rather produce a balanced write up, that can still be be kicked around (and maybe get explicitly stomped on by the OP).
Agreed. There are top-ranked universities in other countries. Additionally, $X might allow 5 students to attend a good university, or 1 student to attend a great university. I’d suggest learning toward a more “diversified” model in which more students receive funding (a larger number of “bets” are taken).
Did you mean to say $12,000/year instead of $1,200/year tuition at ETH Zurich?
I think it’s actually about $1350/year. Closer to $1200 than to $12,000.
US universities are way more expensive than universities in most other countries. I don’t think they are a good value.
I see, then technically one student’s tuition at Brown could fund 56 people’s tuitions at ETH Zurich? And I assume living costs are expensive in both U.S. universities and Zurich, so the living costs should cancel out?
Zurich is way more expensive than the US, but maybe US universities are more expensive than the US in general?
Or tuition plus several years of post-study research support
Zurich might be a little more expensive, but still.
I don’t think Zurich is necessarily an outlier. I think US universities (esp private) are simply massively overcharging.