Trinity ranked 53rd in world and 13th in Europe

Running Bing

OK rankings are not the be all and end all but they count for a lot imo and once again TCD shows it is the premier university on the island with a great performance.



Must say I am very impressed with this, punching well above its weight.

Time Magazine

I for one would like to thank our government for rewarding this achievement with a 7% cut in funding.

...how?

Thirdfox

We're ahead of LSE??? Somehow I doubt that... anyway - go us!

Does anyone have the full table of results?

ApeXaviour

I'm a little astounded myself... bit strange. I'd like to see a breakdown if there's one

Time Magazine

The table is available online from tomorrow.

bellton

My personal experience was that I found it to be full of cliques, parallel universe nerds (who became cool, because in numbers terms they were in the ascendancy) and overall lacking in facilities, academic materials, enlightenment.
But I did study/sleepwalk my way through BESS, until the moment after my pass degree year, mid-way through my finals when I had enough. I wouldn't even think that it is even the best college in Dublin, in realistic terms. Or else, our institutions are a shambles.

Time Magazine

You know they don't rank universities based on the number of cliques, right?

europerson

I must say I am surprised, but, at the same time, well done to all of the College community.

the flananator

Who compiles the lsit?

Out of interest, where did UCD come?

bellton

Ibid wrote: »

You know they don't rank universities based on the number of cliques, right?

Diversity, participation from minority groups

Surely these are both elements that might fit into the rank

that answer your question

John

bellton wrote: »

Diversity, participation from minority groups

Surely these are both elements that might fit into the rank

that answer your question

I can't imagine them having the same weight as academic achievement, research, etc.

bellton

obviously not the same weight as elements you mentioned, but a weighting nonetheless. Mine was an informed personal observation about TCD.

niall2j

It's the Times Higher Education Supplement (www.thes.co.uk/)

I spent some time looking at these and other organisations methods for ranking universities recently and the methodology used here seemed to be the best imo (though not perfect).

It's 50% qualitative - they essentially ask thousands of academics worldwide who the top 20 institutions in their field are and compile the replies, like a ballot.

The other 50% is quantitative - based mainly on research outputs, like number of journal papers published per year, etc. There's a small bit to do with international diversity of students and faculty aswell I think. Bellton - you'd be surprised how very little undergraduate related stuff goes into these rankings - in general, the research stuff is where it's at.

It's a fair bit better than some of the other methods which are a lot narrower in how they rate colleges so I think people in Trinity should be proud.. fair play to ye

Will be interesting to see now if some of the other Irish universities have lifted themselves also...

EDIT:
Seems UCD made it into the top 200 worldwide (up to 179) and UCC up 100 places to 286 - DCU in top 500 too.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/trinity-top-of-the-class-as-colleges-make-global-grade-1214964.html

John

bellton wrote: »

obviously not the same weight as elements you mentioned, but a weighting nonetheless. Mine was an informed personal observation about TCD.

Yes but at the end of the day it is one person's informed opinion versus a bunch of statistics on various qualities that a university is deemed to have in order to be good.

bellton

and you can lie and manipulate statistics in order to lobby for more funding for research. Anyway, academic achievement and meaningful research are alien concepts for many of the half wits clogging up the education system. Or do you just blindly believe everything you read?

r3nu4l

Well Cambridge University is often touted as being one of the best in the World yet I've lived with and am friends with Cambridge Science Graduates (Selwyn College). These people graduated with Biology Degrees - Genetics. I also work with Cambridge Science graduates.

I am continuously shocked and appalled at the lack of knowledge these people have in the areas in which they had supposedly 'specialised' as undergraduates. No, these people did not graduate with poor degrees, the minimum qualification is an upper second class honours degree (referred to in Cambridge as a 'gentlemans degree' because it indicates that a 'fellow' had a social life outside study but wasn't quite a p1sshead)

With my personal experience in mind, I take these types of surveys with a pinch of salt tbh so 'no great shakes' imo.

Doodee

Wasn't DIT considered the hardest Uni to graduate from?

Well done Trinners i guess.

niall2j

r3nu4l wrote: »

Well Cambridge University is often touted as being one of the best in the World...

In my experience in my own field, that's because it is. It comes back to research at the end of the day, postgrads, postdocs and so on. The professor in Cambridge wrote the book (literally!) on what I and lots of my postgrad colleagues do.

Undergrad is important of course, but just because some people you know who attended Cambridge are no great shakes at what they do doesn't mean Cambridge is overrated... it just means they're no great shakes!

Running Bing

Doodee wrote: »

Wasn't DIT considered the hardest Uni to graduate from?

Well done Trinners i guess.

Where did you get that from?


If your talking about dropout rate I dont think that says much about difficulty.

Stargal

Well according to the article in the Indo today, the ranking is based on findings which include the number of citations of the university's academic work in international journals, recruiter review (?), the ratios of international students and the staff:student ratios. It also mentions 'a survey of academics worldwide'.

There'll be more details from THES tomorrow but there's an interesting mixture of qualitative and quantitative stuff there. I wonder how much of Trinity's jump is down to Hegarty 'talking the talk' - basically he's been bigging up Trin as a world-class university for a few years now so people are obviously beginning to pay attention to what he's been saying. It doesn't seem that there's been a massive shift in standards in the college in the past few years so I wonder if it's just really great PR?

Doodee wrote:

Wasn't DIT considered the hardest Uni to graduate from?

Do you mean that DIT had the lowest numbers of students who actually finished their degrees? I don't quite get you. What's the source?

Doodee

was on the radio a few months back IIRC

r3nu4l

niall2j wrote: »

In my experience in my own field, that's because it is. It comes back to research at the end of the day, postgrads, postdocs and so on. The professor in Cambridge wrote the book (literally!) on what I and lots of my postgrad colleagues do.

Undergrad is important of course, but just because some people you know who attended Cambridge are no great shakes at what they do doesn't mean Cambridge is overrated... it just means they're no great shakes!

Now you've stumbled onto my point! You are of course correct. The researchers, PhD students and post-doctoral scientists are the ones that truly earn the University their reputation.

However, particularly with post-docs, a massive proportion of them did not do their initial undergraduate degree at the institution to which they are now affiliated. They received their training elsewhere. Hence, these result have no bearing on the quality of teaching at these universities and do not indicate that the degree obtained from the University itself is actually any good!

A university can have a brilliant reputation for research and yet it's teaching can be absolutely terrible! As an example, I know some absolutely fantastic researchers who are ranked very highly in their respective fields of biological research but who despise lecturing and readily admit that they aren't bothered with the content of the courses they lecture and don't put time into what they lecture.

In some cases these guys have their post-docs lecturing for them but admit that the post-doc is restricted to using their notes and has no freedom to update the lecture notes or make them more relevant.

One lecturer I know in Cambridge admitted privately to me that his undergradute lectures are 'pretty poor' and that undergraduates from his course would have 'a lot of work to do' to update their learnings to anything approaching acceptable.

So in summary, these studies are more often about research and do not reflext the quality of the undergraduate degree. Having excellent researchers does not mean the undergraduate degree is any good

r3nu4l

BTW, Trinity spent a lot of time gathering some of the best researchers in Ireland to the University. Why? Well the best researchers get the biggest grants and the University takes overheads from each grant so the University therefore gets a lot more money.

At one time both Prof ********** and Prof ********** worked at NUI Maynooth Biology Department. TCD made them offers that NUIM refused to match...so needless to say, they left. Both of these guys (Whom I haven't named but some will guess) are world class researchers and now receive massive SFI funding. Recently a certain Bioinformatics lecturer left NUI Maynooth for TCD as well. This guy is also one of the European 'up and coming' Young Researchers and already receives excellent grants.

TCD has invested heavily in attracting research talent and it shows, so fair play to them for that!

defiantshrimp

Thirdfox wrote: »

We're ahead of LSE??? Somehow I doubt that... anyway - go us!

Does anyone have the full table of results?

I think that might have to do with LSE focusing on purely social sciences. Thus it gets less in the way of research grants, etc. It is still certainly the best place in Europe for economics and bats up there with the US Unis.

seraphimvc

LMAO there are tonnes of ranking thingy out there ,which one is OP referring??:D

as soon as trinity the best in ireland,aint us happy enough??

p/s:this is by far the most persuasive uni ranking you can get i guess,try it out.
so far as i can remember :http://www.webometrics.info/index.html

Stargal

seraphimvc wrote: »

LMAO there are tonnes of ranking thingy out there ,which one is OP referring??:D

Uh, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking, which came out today. Have you even read this thread?

niall2j

r3nu4l wrote: »

...

So in summary, these studies are more often about research and do not reflext the quality of the undergraduate degree. Having excellent researchers does not mean the undergraduate degree is any good

Fair point. For better or worse though, research is where it's at if universities want recognition and I would agree with that approach. It's not as easy to compare undergrad performance worldwide as it is for research. That said, the THES method does include some undergrad based performance criteria in its rankings, so it's not totally ignored either.

Running Bing

seraphimvc wrote: »

LMAO there are tonnes of ranking thingy out there ,which one is OP referring??:D

as soon as trinity the best in ireland,aint us happy enough??

p/s:this is by far the most persuasive uni ranking you can get i guess,try it out.
so far as i can remember :http://www.webometrics.info/index.html

Not quite sure what the highlighted part means but Id just like to point out that Trinity is the highest ranked Irish institution on that list as well:D

seraphimvc

Stargal wrote: »

Uh, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking, which came out today. Have you even read this thread?

yes...i was reading it...5 mins after i posted my post:D

please correct me if i am wrong...*seems very likely i am wrong tho:D*

this is so far what i can get on:
http://www.thes.co.uk/Awards/2007/
THES from UK is funny,all UK Uni on the top of any lists
and whatever the newspaper said...
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/trinity-top-of-the-class-as-colleges-make-global-grade-1214964.html
''However, it was the results of the 'Times Higher Education Supplement' (THES) table that caused most delight. ''
so,tell me...are you not referring the table from THES?so where is tat 53rd place came from??


for me,as a perfectly normal college student:D they look like a way of promoting themselves,they MADE a way to promote themselves.

seraphimvc

Babybing wrote: »

Not quite sure what the highlighted part means but Id just like to point out that Trinity is the highest ranked Irish institution on that list as well:D

mate,that's exactly what i mean:p TCD is the best university in the country...even Martian knows that...;)

Stargal

seraphimvc wrote: »

this is so far what i can get on:
http://www.thes.co.uk/Awards/2007/
THES from UK is funny,all UK Uni on the top of any lists

No, you're looking at the wrong thing. Those awards are a completely different thing, forget about them. We're talking about the World University Rankings 2007. They'll be up on the THES site tomorrow; for the moment, if you go to the homepage you'll see they're the first thing mentioned.

seraphimvc wrote:

and whatever the newspaper said...
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/trinity-top-of-the-class-as-colleges-make-global-grade-1214964.html
''However, it was the results of the 'Times Higher Education Supplement' (THES) table that caused most delight. ''
so,tell me...are you not referring the table from THES?so where is tat 53rd place came from??

No Trinity definitely did come 53rd in the world, you were just looking at the wrong table. And you need to have that quote in context to get the full meaning:

The article in the Indo wrote:

Not alone has its overall status strengthened but it has also come second in global immunology research.

The country has been ranked behind Switzerland and ahead of the USA in third place, according to 'Lab Times'.

However, it was the results of the 'Times Higher Education Supplement' (THES) table that caused most delight.

Is that clearer?

seraphimvc

Stargal wrote: »

No, you're looking at the wrong thing. Those awards are a completely different thing, forget about them. We're talking about the World University Rankings 2007. They'll be up on the THES site tomorrow; for the moment, if you go to the homepage you'll see they're the first thing mentioned.

No Trinity definitely did come 53rd in the world, you were just looking at the wrong table. And you need to have that quote in context to get the full meaning:


Is that clearer?

ah,thanks ,mate:Dcheers

so the ranking is not on yet?seems our bosses were celebrating lastnight...insider news...

anyway,my point is,these uni rankings are not persuasive at all,just might give you a slight idea on how're these uni doing at the moment.you cant really 'rank' them,can you?you will spend forever to compare every aspect of each school to each others,what's the point of the ranking?it's business and this makes the ranking kinda shallow tbh.

Fallen Seraph

bellton wrote: »

parallel universe nerds (who became cool, because in numbers terms they were in the ascendancy) and overall lacking in facilities, academic materials, enlightenment.

bellton wrote: »

Anyway, academic achievement and meaningful research are alien concepts for many of the half wits clogging up the education system. Or do you just blindly believe everything you read?

bellton wrote: »

obviously not the same weight as elements you mentioned, but a weighting nonetheless. Mine was an informed personal observation about TCD.

Yes. Informed opinion. Where you think that intelligent people not being ridiculed/social outcasts is upsetting to the natural order but nevertheless feel it appropriate to say that anyone who isn't intelligent shouldn't be in trinity. Well done.


FWIW I think that r3nu4l's right. Good research doesn't necessarily imply good undergrad teaching.

Not that I've anything to complain about wrt undergrad lecturing insofar as I've experienced it. I just mean it's not really anything for us regular students to be getting excited over.

Corruptedmorals

DCU actually has the highest dropout rate, it was in a 'choice' thing magazine that came with the Irish Times, on the day of the CAO 1st round this year.

Running Bing

Corruptedmorals wrote: »

DCU actually has the highest dropout rate, it was in a 'choice' thing magazine that came with the Irish Times, on the day of the CAO 1st round this year.

You sure? Thought DCU's DO rate would be down there with the likes of TCD and UCD?



I thought i remember reading that there is some IT down the country with a crazy dropout rate of 40% or it could have even been 60%:eek:

Corruptedmorals

Ah I'm not sure if it was out of the universities, in which case DIT isn't included, or all IT's and unis. Out of the 7, it's the highest, and possibly over DIT also...probably not countrywide IT's..

Doesn't DCU have some 'de register' option thingy which pushes its rate up?

Pet

Not that I've anything to complain about wrt undergrad lecturing insofar as I've experienced it. I just mean it's not really anything for us regular students to be getting excited over.

I, for one, have some utterly woeful lecturers. Quite a few, actually.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Fallen Seraph wrote: »

Yes. Informed opinion. Where you think that intelligent people not being ridiculed/social outcasts is upsetting to the natural order but...

There's a difference between "parallel universe nerds" and intelligent people.

Fallen Seraph wrote: »

...nevertheless feel it appropriate to say that anyone who isn't intelligent shouldn't be in trinity. Well done.

Isn't this a fair enough comment to make? There are far too many thick people in Trinity. Not just those of a mediocre intellect, but actual ****ing idiots. They don't belong in a University. Simple As That.

(Note that I might have been misconstruing the second part of your sentence as simply being a rebuke for making what might have been in your eyes a contradictory statement, but I'm basing my interpretation on the fact that you say "feel it appropriate" as if it's somehow a wrong thing to say...or "politically incorrect" as they call it nowadays.)

dreambrook

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=45376&d=1194544190

Fallen Seraph

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI wrote: »

There's a difference between "parallel universe nerds" and intelligent people.

Tbh, I've no idea what "parallel universe nerds" are. Whatever they are, I thought that there was a strong implication that the fact that they aren't ridiculed, but rather respected (and simply through sheer force of numbers) , was upsetting to the natural order. Regardless of the actual definition of the term, this is a mind-blowingly ignorant comment.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI wrote: »

Isn't this a fair enough comment to make? There are far too many thick people in Trinity. Not just those of a mediocre intellect, but actual ****ing idiots. They don't belong in a University. Simple As That.

(Note that I might have been misconstruing the second part of your sentence as simply being a rebuke for making what might have been in your eyes a contradictory statement, but I'm basing my interpretation on the fact that you say "feel it appropriate" as if it's somehow a wrong thing to say...or "politically incorrect" as they call it nowadays.)

Oh indeed. I thought there was a contradiction in his posting. I have no problem with it being said that people who don't deserve to be in college don't deserve to be in college. I don't necessarily agree with it, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

bellton

Fallen Seraph wrote: »

Tbh, I've no idea what "parallel universe nerds" are. Whatever they are, I thought that there was a strong implication that the fact that they aren't ridiculed, but rather respected (and simply through sheer force of numbers) , was upsetting to the natural order. Regardless of the actual definition of the term, this is a mind-blowingly ignorant comment.

It can be reasonably assumed that college life has probably stunted your ability to think!....if you can't figure out what a parallel universe nerd is. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination.

You were the one who mentioned ridicule. I know that you have got my sentiments all wrong. Nerds should never be elevated in perception, all people should be respected (including nerds), intelligent people should be consulted,
And that is not saying that nerds should be pilloried but they certainly should not become the model on which collegiate norms should be based. you dig?

Thirdfox

Does anyone have a copy of the actual table?

Stargal

Thirdfox wrote: »

Does anyone have a copy of the actual table?

It's at http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings/, but you have to register (it's free for 14 days) to get to see any of the results.

Stargal

Here, I've copied and pasted the first 60 (but have taken out their scores cos the formatting was crazy).

Here's how Trinity scored:
Peer Review: 80, Employer Review: 92, Staff/student score: 70, Citations/staff score: 58, International staff score: 99, International student score 77, Overall: 76.9

The World's Top 200 Universities
2007 rank 2006 rank
1 1 Harvard
2= 2 University of Cambridge
2= 3 University of Oxford
2= 4= Yale University
5 9 Imperial College London
6 10 Princeton University
7= 7 California Institute of Technology
7= 11 University of Chicago
9 25 University College London
10 4= Massachusetts Institute of Technology
11 12 Columbia University
12 21 McGill University
13 13 Duke University
14 26 University of Pennsylvania
15 23 Johns Hopkins University
16 16 Australian National University
17 19= University of Tokyo
18 33= University of Hong Kong
19 6 Stanford University
20= 35= Carnegie Mellon University
20= 15 Cornell University
22 8 University of California, Berkeley
23 33= University of Edinburgh
24 46= King’s College London
25 29= Kyoto University
26 18 Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris
27 22 University of Melbourne
28 37 Ecole Polytechnique
29 42 Northwestern University
30 40 University of Manchester
31 35= University of Sydney
32 54= Brown University
33= 50= University of British Columbia
33= 45 University of Queensland
33= 19= National University of Singapore
36 14 Peking University
37 64= University of Bristol
38= 50= Chinese University of Hong Kong
38= 29= University of Michigan
40 28 Tsinghua University
41 31 University of California, Los Angeles
42 24 ETH Zurich
43 38 Monash University
44 41 University of New South Wales
45 27 University of Toronto
46 =70 Osaka University
47 66 Boston University
48 69 University of Amsterdam
49 43 New York University
50 46= University of Auckland New Zealand
51= 63 Seoul National University
51= 32 University of Texas at Austin
53= 58= Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
53= 78 Trinity College Dublin Ireland
55= 84 University of Washington
55= 79= University of Wisconsin-Madison
57 73 University of Warwick
58 44 University of California, San Diego
59 17 London School of Economics
60 58= Heidelberg University

notjim

Go to the library catelog and search journals for Times Higher and there is a link to information about how to get access.

Thirdfox

Thank you!

Kwekubo

Alternatively you can try dreambrook's link above (The Student Room login required).