A number of different systems exist around the world for identifying the world’s top universities. The most popular academic rankings systems used in Britain are the ‘Shanghai Jiao Tong University’ Academic Rankings of World Universities and the ‘Times Higher Education Supplement’ (THES) ‘Top Two Hundred Universities’.

The ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities’ is published by Shanghai Jiao University in China and ranks the world’s universities using a weighted system that includes research staff being highly cited in twenty-one wide ranging subject categories (20%), academic staff winning Nobel Prizes and Field Medals (20%), past graduates winning Nobel Prizes and Field Medals (10%), articles published in ‘Nature and Science’ (20%), the Social Sciences Citation Index, Science Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (20%) as well as the size of the university (10%). Because of its comparatively non-subjective method of analysis, the ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities’ have frequently been mentioned by The Economist magazine in grading the world’s Higher Education Institutions. The Shanghai rankings are however criticised for putting too much weight on the Nobel prizewinners instead of emphasising the broader impact of a university’s scientific and technological output. It is argued that this also results in skewing the rankings toward the scientific disciplines for which more Nobel Prizes are awarded. There are 3 Nobel prizes for the scientific disciplines (physics, chemistry and medicine), 1 for the social sciences (economics), 1 for the arts (literature) and the Peace Prize. Universities with faculty or past graduates who have won Fields medals for mathematics are also rewarded, but awards for similar accomplishments in the arts are not measured.

The THES World’s Top Universities are produced by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The ranking system is weighed according to the following formula; peer review (40%), citations in academic journals per staff member for the previous five years (20%), academic staff to student ratio (20%), recruiter review (10%) and internationalisation of the university (10%).

The peer review involves selecting academics of equal numbers from Europe, Asia, North America and the remaining world who are also selected in equal proportions from engineering and IT, arts and humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and the life sciences. These academics are then asked to name the top thirty universities in their subject area. The peer review is formulated to find the most intellectually active universities.

The ‘recruiter review’ compiles questionnaire responses from 736 employers that have recruited from the world’s top universities.

The internationalisation of the university is given half it’s weighting from numbers of international staff and the other half from numbers of international students. Internationalisation frequently creates the most contention as academicians contend that it should not come down to university size, and the smaller universities lose points due to not having as many international faculty members or students.

No ranking system comes without its criticism. The growth of education as a worldwide marketplace and the resulting competition has created demand for a university rating system. A lot of universities around the world acknowledge the THES World’s Top Universities rankings and actively strive to improve their own place within it.

By attending one of the best as well as the top medical schools in the world today they will be able to gain a wealth of experience and knowledge that they will need in the future for their chosen career path. Certainly when a person is considering attending any kind of medical school they need to take into consideration a number of different factors. One such factor that should be considered carefully is the ranking of medical schools to each other.

But before you make your decision it is wise for you to actually look at what the various medical schools have to offer and you should not base your decision solely on what ranking they hold.

One of the first things that you will need to take into consideration is just what field of medicine it is you are interested in training in. As you will soon discover that most universities today will specialize in particular aspects of medicine. Some will deal solely with the training for those who want to become general practitioners whilst others will deal more with the research side. Therefore if you are considering becoming a general practitioner you need to find a university which will also allow you to have interaction at the latter stages of your training with patients.

Certainly the best place to start searching for information about the various universities which now offer medical training is on the internet. You will not only be able to get hold of information relating to the kinds of courses that are available for you to take but more detailed information relating to what else they can offer you. Although this may seem to be a bit time consuming at the end of the day it will help you to make the right decision as to what sort of training you want to do and where you want it to take place.

Because there is now so much information available on the internet with regard to medical schools you can soon easily find everything that you need to know about a particular one. You can review the statistics which will show just how many of the students who have attended that particular school have obtained passes and qualifications at the end of their training. You can also read reviews written about these schools and by entering their own websites you often have a chance to talk with students who are currently attending the school along with the faculty members.

Although the ranking of medical schools is extremely as it helps you to understand which of these are likely to provide you with the best education possible. A student should not go on this alone when selecting the school they wish to attend rather they should learn as much as possible before hand so that they will know what is expected of them when they do start their training.

Undoubtedly the top ranked universities in Singapore are NUS and NTU!

National University of Singapore

National University of Singapore (NUS) is ranked 33 in the Times Higher Education Supplement’s World University Rankings 2007.

According to the Financial Times (FT) 2006 EMBA ranking of the Top 85 EMBA programs, NUS Business School rises in rankings for Executive MBA programs to be among world’s Top 29.
NUS Business School did extremely well in two of the sub-categories – it came out Top 5 for the categories of ‘International Attendees’, and ‘Top Salaries in IT/ Telecommunications’.

According to the THES 2006 World Ranking in the field of technology, NUS Faculty of Engineering ranked 8th in the World’s top 100 in Technology

According to the Newsweek Ranking of Global University, NUS is ranked 36th in the top 100 universities.

Nanyang Technological University

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is the world’s top 20 technological university!

According to the Times Higher Education Supplement’s World University Rankings 2007, NTU is ranked 69 in the world.

The university has 2 campuses in Singapore: NTU at one-north campus and the Yunnan Garden campus. NTU at one-north campus is located next to Biopolis, the Singapore biomedical research hub. NTU has strong reputation overseas, linkages with world famous universities such as University of Washington, Stanford University, MIT, Cambridge, to name a few.

It offers undergraduate and graduate courses in Accountancy, Business, Communication Studies, Engineering, Science and Arts.

The university is recognized globally for its excellence in science and engineering. The College of Engineering is one of the world largest engineering colleges, with 6 engineering schools offering a variety of programs and specializations to meet the needs of many students.

It is also home to the National Institute of Education (NIE), which is the only teacher training institute in Singapore. NIE provides educational services to countries such as Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

The College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences is the first Singapore professional art school offering courses in art, design and media.

Nanyang Business School (NBS) offers one of the world top 100 MBA programs. According to the Financial Times survey (published in Jan 2007), its MBA program is ranked Number 1 in Singapore and Number 2 in Asia.

For more information on the latest university rankings (Australia, Canada, UK, USA and the world), please visit the Good University Ranking Guide and World Ranking Guide

The author holds an MBA from Heriot-Watt University (UK) and a BCom degree from The University of Adelaide (Australia).

When thinking about starting school for accounting, you want to research which schools there are along with the accounting school rankings. You would not want to attend a school that is not set up totally to full fill your needs.

There are so many colleges and universities that say they offer the best traditional, long distance, or online education but it is better to research for your self how they stand in the accounting school rankings.

There are several entities that rank schools and among them are BUSINESS WEEK, US NEWS, WORLD REPORT and NEWSWEEK. These companies research through all the business schools on their curriculum, graduation rate, academic resources, student activity, faculty resources, grade output, university connections, and on the financial status of the school.

Its important to know everything you can about the accounting school. Rankings will help you to make a good decision on what school is going to help you get your career started.

According to BUSINESS WEEK, the top 30 accounting school rankings from one to 30 are U. of Chicago, U of Penn., Northwestern U., Harvard U., U. of Michigan, Stanford U., MIT, UC Berkeley, Duke U., Columbia U., Dartmouth, UCLA, Cornell U., NYU, U. of Virginia, Carnegie Mellon, UNC., Indiana U., Yale U., Texas U., U. of Southern California, Georgetown U., Emory U., Purdue U., U. of Maryland, U. of Notre Dame, Washington U., Rochester, Michigan State U., and Vanderbilt U..

The other main companies accounting school rankings basically go the same route as business week. When you do your research on colleges, you should also check with the state’s Better Business Bureau. Especially when you are dealing with all the online schools. A website named OEDB which is OnLine Education Data Base has compiled an accounting school rankings system for online education.

Online education is growing but has not yet received the respect as have the in house colleges. These online accounting school rankings were started in 2007 and they have helped shed light to prospective students. Their online accounting school rankings were based on acceptance rate, financial aid, graduation rate, years accredited, student-faculty ratio, scholarly citations, retention rate, and peer web citations.

According to the accounting school rankings, the top 10 online schools listed from one to ten are Upper Iowas U., LeTourneau U., Liberty U., Nova Southeastern U., California U. of Pennsylvania, Grand Canyon U., Regent U., Champlain College, Westwood College, and Tiffin University. Source: Accraccountingdegree dot com