The 2117/2118 school year has already started, and many families of prospective international students have already started school selection planning in advance. Although we have repeatedly stressed that when choosing a school, we should not blindly rely on various rankings to make a judgment benchmark. But in fact, among all the websites studying abroad, the ranking bar has the highest click rate.

In fact, the standards and contents of international university rankings will be constantly revised and supplemented with the development of the times, and it can't be said that they are completely without reference value, mainly because students and parents have to learn how to look at the rankings correctly. Let's share this topic with you today.

first of all, we need to know the four authoritative rankings of international universities: US News, QS, THE World Rankings and ARWU.

US News, which is updated once a year, is the most famous ranking of American universities in the world, and has a close relationship with QS.

QS, an international higher education consultancy focusing on providing higher education and recruiting graduates, cooperates with News and World Report and The Sun to publish the annual world university rankings.

THE World Rankings, a higher education newspaper published in Britain, cooperates with the famous media Reuters every year to publish the world university rankings in autumn.

ARWU, published once a year by the World-class University Research Center of Shanghai Jiaotong University, was originally designed to analyze the status of famous universities in China in the world university system, and has become the first multi-index global university ranking in the world.

The four major academic rankings mainly depend on academic achievements, students and the number of papers cited. Among the Top211 schools in the world, the United States has always been ahead, maintaining nearly 91, while the second-ranked Britain has about 31.

US News is relatively balanced. besides peer evaluation and the reputation of the school, it also pays attention to investigating the return rate and graduation rate of students, that is, whether they drop out of school halfway or can't finish school after six years. It also includes the quality level of freshmen admitted to the school, judges the proportion of students' training expenses and evaluates students' satisfaction with their studies.

Therefore, in the universities that are at the top of US News, students usually have a great sense of pride and identity with their alma mater, and their satisfaction will be higher. Because its analytical method is the most credible, more than 94% schools will take the initiative to invite this institution for evaluation, and make different proportions of funding subsidies according to its ranking.

It is worth mentioning that there is a lot of subjective consciousness hidden in these objective data. For example, if the amount of alumni donations of a university increased significantly last year, it may throw away several universities with similar rankings before. The progress of enrollment quality and the improvement of graduates' employment rate seem to represent the success of a school, but in fact this does not represent the success of every student.

If you care about your life at school and the level of your classmates' contacts, when facing two universities with almost the same level, choose the one with higher ranking in US News! Basically, among the four rankings, this one is the most credible.

QS, one of the oldest ranking institutions, is also the school ranking that enterprises like to refer to most. Moreover, QS attaches great importance to its satisfaction with the ranking of international education, which is embodied in its investigation on the proportion of China international students who are academic and teaching staff. In contrast, the traditional Liberal Art universities are mostly Chinese, and their rankings will be relatively low, but this is not necessarily bad, because when the proportion of international students is low, most of the classes are American, which means that you will become the special one.

As we all know, among the international students, China students are the fastest growing. Imagine that if the proportion of international students in China accounts for 81% of the whole project, more than 61% of the students may be Chinese faces.

QS's academic research reputation accounts for 41%, and many educators are worried about the imbalance. But in fact, no matter what purpose you want to enter a good university, learning knowledge is what will benefit you all your life, and QS ranking also attaches great importance to the reputation of graduates entering the workplace, which is why enterprises like to watch QS ranking.

For the sake of future employment needs, it's right to find those who rank high in QS. At least in general, enterprises will pay more attention to the graduates of these schools in QS when applying for jobs.

Then THE ranking of The and ARWU focuses on academic and research achievements. Attaching importance to academics means not only attaching importance to the citation ratio of final papers, but also including the environmental quality and resources for students to do academics. THE pays more attention to the learning environment and the influence of academic achievements, while ARWU mostly determines its ranking by the performance and achievements of international scientific research (Nobel Prize and academic awards in this field) and the academic papers produced. On the other hand, if you look forward to your future career development in the industry, this ranking can be used as a reference.

If you want to advance in THE academic field in the future, don't hesitate. The and ARWU are the rankings you should pay attention to! Maybe the next Nobel Prize winner is you!

Now it's time to talk about how to use these rankings correctly to choose an ideal school.

ranking in the field of making good use of

whether you want to enter the academic field or the enterprise side, besides excellent diplomas, everyone pays more attention to students' practical ability. Each school can provide different teaching quality and teaching resources for different fields. In addition to the comprehensive ranking, these four rankings will be classified for different fields, including the Faculty and the subject to summarize the dominant majors and the richness of resources provided by different schools. By looking for rankings in various fields, we can use these rankings more objectively.

Personalized search

The items offered by each school are different. In addition to searching for general items, remember to search your favorite schools more carefully. Only by setting your own goals can you make better use of the rankings in these academic and professional fields to measure your needs.

find the key person

there are two key persons here, the first is from the school, and the second is the role model.

a) Usually, schools have career development centers. If you have any questions, just send a letter to ask, especially for master's and doctor's questions. Usually, the website will not provide a complete explanation. Or usually more professional projects will list the names and research topics of the professors. If you are really interested or have related questions, taking the initiative to show your enthusiasm and ability will make you score more points in the interview and application.

b) role model is the kind of person you want to be in the future, for example, it may be the CEO or general manager of a company you yearn for. Because in the vast school rankings, sometimes it is really difficult to choose, and the schools that you like to use in different industries are not the same. Look for the profile of these key people and find out which school or project they graduated from. When you find that those people all graduated from a school or a professional project, congratulations, you will find your goal.

How to find your "dim light" in the vast ocean of schools, and make good use of these rankings to make a search, you will find that everything is not that difficult.