myUface Blog

In researching universities in the United States, you’re likely to look at some lists or information about how the university is “ranked” in comparison with other universities.  And you’ll probably want to go to a university that is ranked high on the list.  This is natural.  Everyone wants to go to the best university, and so when we read that University X is ranked #1, and University Y is ranked #100, we quite understandably would prefer to attend university X.

But is the ranking system accurate?  Is the #1 ranked university really the #1 best university?

The most famous and influential ranking is U.S. News and World Report’s annual ranking of U.S. institutions of higher education.  It ranks colleges and universities according to several different criteria, and it provides a simple list as a summary.  Here, for example, are the top-five ranked universities according to U.S. News and World Report:

1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Yale
4. MIT
5. Stanford

Not everyone believes that these rankings  accurately reflect educational quality, however.  In this article, Amy Graham and Nicholas Thompson lay out what they view as problems with U.S. News and World Report’s methodology:

Unfortunately, the highly influential U.S. News & World Report annual guide to “America’s Best Colleges” pays scant attention to measures of learning or good educational practices, even as it neatly ranks colleges in long lists of the sort that Americans love. It could be a major part of the solution; instead, it’s a problem.

U.S. News’ rankings primarily register a school’s wealth, reputation, and the achievement of the high-school students it admits. At one time, most academics believed in one simple equation: Good students plus good faculty equals good school. The rankings reflect this outlook, tabulating things such as percent of faculty with a doctorate (to measure the quality of the professors) and SAT scores of the freshman class (to get at quality of the students). That’s like measuring the quality of a restaurant by calculating how much it paid for silverware and food: not completely useless, but pretty far from ideal.

You could also ask if it’s a good idea to rank a university as if it were a single unit:

[E]ach institution is nothing more than a collection of local chapters of international intellectual fraternities.  The quality of each chapter at each institution is more or less independent of the quality of any other chapter at the same institution, except to the extent that financial muscle can attract better quality across the board.

In other words, the quality of education is mostly dependent on individual professors and departments, which are not necessarily reflected in the rankings for their host institutions.

The individuals who do the rankings are well aware of the methodological difficulties, and even a well-known methodology like U.S. News and World Report’s is constantly refined.  The struggle to arrive at a comprehensive and fair set of criteria for ranking programs and institutions has led to the formation of various national and international associations, for example The International Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence.

The bottom line is, remember that each ranking system has its own set of criteria, which may or may not apply to your own personal or professional goals.  So when you see that University X is #1,  that does not necessarily mean that University X is #1 for you.

The rankings that are most useful for you are going to be the ones you make yourself.

Posts in this Series

1. Conclusion - How to Choose a U.S. University - 02 Jun
2. Activities Around a University Campus - 01 Jun
3. Check Out U.S. Universities on iTunes U - 26 May
4. Extracurricular Activities - 25 May
5. Get to Know Your Potential Professors - 21 May
6. Don't Forget Your Life! - 20 May
7. What Do You Want to See in the U.S.? - 19 May
8. How Many International Students go to your Chosen University? - 18 May
9. The Problem with University Rankings (This post)
10. Using Facebook to Research Universities - 14 May
11. Look at the Surrounding Neighborhoods When Looking at a U.S. University - 13 May
12. How Weather Should Factor Into Your Search for a U.S. University - 12 May
13. Looking for a University in the United States: Cost of Living - 11 May
14. Looking for a University in the United States - 10 May

The podcast for this week goes into more detail about using university rankings when you’re looking for a U.S. university.

Questions?  As always, you can e-mail them to podcast@myuface.com or blog@myuface.com.

Other Podcasts

1. Podcast: Asking Questions - 18 Jul
2. Podcast: Give Yourself Time To Complete Your Application - 13 Jun
3. Podcast: What to Do if your Application is not Accepted - 06 Jun
4. Podcast - The View from Albania - 23 May
5. Podcast: University Rankings (This post)
6. Podcast: Timeline for Applying to a U.S. University - 09 May
7. The Inaugural myUface Podcast - 02 May

For today’s mailbag I want to respond to some common questions we get when talking to students (or others) about myUface.com.  Fairly soon we’ll incorporate some of these into a “Frequently Asked Questions” page on the main site.

OK, here we go:

What can myUface do for me?

At myUface.com we will help you create a student profile and application and share it with our university partners. Your profile includes everything a university needs to know about you – your educational goals, your financial information, your application materials (like essay and test scores), and even fun things like sports you play or hobbies you enjoy.

Once we walk you through the creation of your profile, myUface will help find the right university and program for you. What’s even better, our universities will be able to review your profile and contact you if they think you would be a good fit for them.
When we find a university that fits your needs, and that university likes your profile, the university will invite you to apply.

When will myUface be open for business?

myUface.com is currently building a strong group of university partners. We plan to open the site to students on in early summer, 2009.

In the meantime, please visit this blog for daily advice about getting into university in the U.S.  The blog is also a good place to post comments or questions about the process of getting into university in the U.S.

Will myUface get me into a U.S. university?

myUface doesn’t have control over the admissions decisions of U.S. universities, so we can’t promise that by using our service you’ll get into a U.S. university. However, we can greatly improve your chances of finding a U.S. university by:

• simplifying the application process
• providing you with a way to advertise yourself to many different universities at the same time
• giving you advice about how to improve your application

The truth is, the process of getting into a U.S. university is not as complicated as it seems. You can do it, if you are dedicated and willing to work hard. And remember, you’re not alone: we will be there to help.

How much does myUface cost?

myUface is free for students. That means that you can create and publish an online profile for U.S. universities to look at for free.

In the future, we will offer some additional services for an extra cost:

• you will be able to get myUface.com’s team of professional proofreaders to read and comment on your application essays.
• you will also be able to have myUface.com interview you, and comment on your interview.

Have an additional question? E-mail it to blog@myuface.com

Facebook can be a great resource to research U.S. universities.  In this post, we’ll go through how you can use Facebook to get interesting and unique information about U.S. colleges and universities.  It’s very easy.

First, sign into Facebook.  If you don’t have an account you can easily start one, even if you’re only going to use it to do this research.  (QUICK NOTE: If you have a Facebook page already, be careful about what you put there.  A lot of U.S. universities are using Facebook to do research on students who apply.  More about this in a later post).

Second, go the the “Search” box and type in the name of the university you’re researching.  A few different resources should appear:

1. The university’s official facebook page. Most universities have an official facebook page at this point.  Generally, this is going to be the least useful thing you can find on facebook, since most of the information will come from the university website, which you’ve probably already been to.
2. Student groups and networks. There will probably be many different groups and networks for a particular university.  Looking at these groups – reading the message boards, for example – will give you a very interesting look into the kind of students that go to a particular university.  You will also see the different kinds of groups associated with a particular university.  For example, there might be a group for athletes, or a group for students of foreign languages. Now, do NOT jump to conclusions about a university based only on these student groups. Facebook will provide you an interesting pictures of student life at a university, but remember, it’s just a picture – it isn’t the entire reality.  Also keep in mind that most of these groups will be focused on social life.  If you see a lot of posts about parties, don’t assume that all students do at the university is party.  They certainly study as well . . . they just don’t write about it on Facebook.
3. Alumni groups and networks. Perhaps the most useful resource will be alumni groups for the particular university.  Looking at the alumni groups will give you a sense of how students who graduated from the university view their overall experience.  It will also give you some hints as to how graduates of the university are doing professionally.  Alumni groups are more useful than student groups, in my opinion, because they are generally a little more serious.  Also, a large an active alumni community is a sign in itself of a quality university experience.

But by FAR the most useful aspect of facebook in terms of university research is the connection it gives you to students and alumni.  If you politely brefriend them, chances are they’ll be more than happy to answer your questions about the university.  And information from students and alumni is just about the best kind of information you can get.

The bottom line is, don’t underestimate the value of Facebook when doing your research on U.S. universities.  It is a very powerful and useful tool.

For your consideration: Have you checked up on universities on facebook?  What kind of pages or groups did you find?  What, if anything, did it tell you about the university?

Posts in this Series

1. Conclusion - How to Choose a U.S. University - 02 Jun
2. Activities Around a University Campus - 01 Jun
3. Check Out U.S. Universities on iTunes U - 26 May
4. Extracurricular Activities - 25 May
5. Get to Know Your Potential Professors - 21 May
6. Don't Forget Your Life! - 20 May
7. What Do You Want to See in the U.S.? - 19 May
8. How Many International Students go to your Chosen University? - 18 May
9. The Problem with University Rankings - 17 May
10. Using Facebook to Research Universities (This post)
11. Look at the Surrounding Neighborhoods When Looking at a U.S. University - 13 May
12. How Weather Should Factor Into Your Search for a U.S. University - 12 May
13. Looking for a University in the United States: Cost of Living - 11 May
14. Looking for a University in the United States - 10 May

The people that live in the neighborhoods around a university are going to have a huge influence on the lives of students at that university.  Some universities are going to be situated in the hearts of bustling metropolises, full of business and activity.  Others are going to be nestled in small, quiet towns.  The type of neighborhood surrounding a university will impact what you, as a student, can do there.  Do you dream of going out to clubs night after night after night?  You need to go to a university in an urban area.  Do you like the quiet life?  Maybe a university in a neighborhood filled with older, married couples would suit you.

You need to look at the demographic data for the neighborhoods surrounding your university.  This data will tell you a lot of interesting things:  how many people live there?  What is there average age?  What is their ethnic background?  What kind of lifestyle do they lead?  These are important things to consider in choosing a town in which to spend four years of your life.

And once again, we’ve got some very good resources to allow you to check up on the demographics of your university’s town.  First, for the raw data, you can’t get much better than Zipskinny, which provides all the latest census data in an easily-understood format.  For a little more fun, go to this site, provided by Claritas, a target marketing firm.  Claritas categorizes each and every American as one of sixty-six types, and will tell you which five types are most prevalent in any given location.  For example, where I live, “American Dreams” are very common:

American Dreams is a living example of how ethnically diverse the nation has become: just under half the residents are Hispanic, Asian, or African-American. In these multilingual neighborhoods–one in ten speaks a language other than English–middle-aged immigrants and their children live in upper-middle-class comfort.

At either site you’ll need the zip code of your university.  You may want to check surrounding zip codes as well.

The bottom line is that, as you research universities, it’s a good idea to do some basic research into the surrounding community.

For your consideration: What kind of town or city would you like to live in while studying at university?  What kind of people would you like to live in that town?

Posts in this Series

1. Conclusion - How to Choose a U.S. University - 02 Jun
2. Activities Around a University Campus - 01 Jun
3. Check Out U.S. Universities on iTunes U - 26 May
4. Extracurricular Activities - 25 May
5. Get to Know Your Potential Professors - 21 May
6. Don't Forget Your Life! - 20 May
7. What Do You Want to See in the U.S.? - 19 May
8. How Many International Students go to your Chosen University? - 18 May
9. The Problem with University Rankings - 17 May
10. Using Facebook to Research Universities - 14 May
11. Look at the Surrounding Neighborhoods When Looking at a U.S. University (This post)
12. How Weather Should Factor Into Your Search for a U.S. University - 12 May
13. Looking for a University in the United States: Cost of Living - 11 May
14. Looking for a University in the United States - 10 May

When people plan a week-long vacation, they spend hours and hours and hours worrying about the weather.  What’s the temperature going to be?  Is it going to rain?  Do I need to bring an umbrella?  Sunscreen?

But for some reason, when people are going to go to study at a university, not just for a week, but for four entire years of their life, they often don’t seem to care at all about the weather!

The weather is important. For one thing, there is evidence to suggest that the weather can affect your mood, especially specific aspects of the weather like humidity and sunshine.

But at a more basic level, just ask yourself, what kind of weather do you like?  Take a moment to think about that.  Then ask yourself, wouldn’t it be nice to study in a place  that has that kind of weather?

The United States is such a big country, with so many different climates, that I can almost promise you there’s a university situated in the kind of climate you like.  Like tropical weather?  Florida or Hawaii are good bets.  Enjoy dry climates with lots of sun?  The American Southwest would be a good destination.  Enjoy winter sports?  How about Colorado?

So, when you’re researching a university, make sure you look into the climate.   How to do that?  It’s remarkably easy.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (try saying that five times fast) has a great page called “United States Climate Page.”  There you can click on a state, then on cities and towns in that state.  It doesn’t have every town, so you may need to choose a city that’s close by to your university.  The available data includes average temperature, yearly precipitation (that’s rain and snow), the percentage of days that are sunny, and so on and so forth.

You can also go to any of the countless weather sites and get a good, detailed look at the weather on a partticular day.  Most of these sites will have some kind of historical data as well.  For example, Accuweather allows you to look at the average temperature for a city on a month-by-month or day-by-day basis.  Weather.com provides good summaries of temperature and precipitation (look for the button that says “Averages“).

The bottom line is that you’re not only going to study at a university, you’re going to live there.  And the weather is something that can drastically impact the quality of your life.  So spend some time researching the weather at the universities you’re interested in.  That way, you won’t forget to pack your sunblock.  Or your umbrella.

Posts in this Series

1. Conclusion - How to Choose a U.S. University - 02 Jun
2. Activities Around a University Campus - 01 Jun
3. Check Out U.S. Universities on iTunes U - 26 May
4. Extracurricular Activities - 25 May
5. Get to Know Your Potential Professors - 21 May
6. Don't Forget Your Life! - 20 May
7. What Do You Want to See in the U.S.? - 19 May
8. How Many International Students go to your Chosen University? - 18 May
9. The Problem with University Rankings - 17 May
10. Using Facebook to Research Universities - 14 May
11. Look at the Surrounding Neighborhoods When Looking at a U.S. University - 13 May
12. How Weather Should Factor Into Your Search for a U.S. University (This post)
13. Looking for a University in the United States: Cost of Living - 11 May
14. Looking for a University in the United States - 10 May

We’ll start off our series of posts looking at how to identify U.S. universities by taking a peek at something that will have a huge impact on your years in the U.S.:  cost of living.

If you take the same amount of money to New York, NY, and Fargo, ND, you’re going to have vastly different spending power.  Why should this matter to you?  Well, you’ll probably want to do things besides studying while you’re in the U.S..  You might want to, for example:

• go to an amusement park
• go out on the town
• take a date out to a restaurant
• see a movie
• hit the road and see some tourist attractions

All of these things will be more expensive in some cities than in others – meaning you’ll get to do them less often. For that reason, when you’re looking at a particular university, it’s a good idea to research the cost of living in that university’s home town.

There are a number of good resources on the internet to help you do just that.  To start with, check out Forbes magazine’s list of America’s most overpriced cities.  If a university is in one of these towns, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go there.  It does mean you should plan on spending more . . . . in some cases, a lot more.

This nifty cost of living calculator allows you to compare two different cities.  To use the above example, it turns out that, if you lived in Fargo and were contemplating a move to New York, you’d need to increase your salary by 136% in order to maintain your standard of living (i.e., if you make $50,000 now, you’d need $118,000 in Manhattan.  Ouch).

Money magazine compiles a lot of different data into a list of the best places to live.  Although this is intended for families (or at least for people who have already graduated), it’s still interesting to note that Fort Collins, CO (home of Colorado State University) is #2, where as Cambridge, MA (home of a few fairly well-known universities) doesn’t crack the top 100.

There are many other indexes, lists, and calculators available.  Whichever one you use, the bottom line is this: the cost of living of the town in which a university is located will have a big impact on the kind of life you’ll live while studying there.  For that reason, it’s important to do research on cost of living as you look into different Universities in the U.S.

For your consideration: You probably have a few universities you’re already interested in.  What towns are they located in?  What data can you find on the cost of living in those towns?

Posts in this Series

1. Conclusion - How to Choose a U.S. University - 02 Jun
2. Activities Around a University Campus - 01 Jun
3. Check Out U.S. Universities on iTunes U - 26 May
4. Extracurricular Activities - 25 May
5. Get to Know Your Potential Professors - 21 May
6. Don't Forget Your Life! - 20 May
7. What Do You Want to See in the U.S.? - 19 May
8. How Many International Students go to your Chosen University? - 18 May
9. The Problem with University Rankings - 17 May
10. Using Facebook to Research Universities - 14 May
11. Look at the Surrounding Neighborhoods When Looking at a U.S. University - 13 May
12. How Weather Should Factor Into Your Search for a U.S. University - 12 May
13. Looking for a University in the United States: Cost of Living (This post)
14. Looking for a University in the United States - 10 May

So, you want to study at a university in the United States.  The only question is, Which one?

Because, as we’ve mentioned before, there are over 4,000 of them.

Now, for some people, the answer to this question is easy:  What university am I going to study at?  Well, obviously one of the good ones.  You know, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, those kinds of universities.

After all, you can go online to the U.S. News and World Report Rankings and get a tidy list of the best U.S. universities.  Easy, right?

For those that think choosing a university is as easy as downloading a list of rankings, we ask you to take this very short quiz:

Now, by posting this we don’t mean to suggest that universities like Harvard or Yale aren’t great universities – they are.  What we are suggesting is merely that different universities are going to have different strengths and weaknesses.  Hard as it may be to believe, the “best” universities aren’t the “best” at everything, and if you base your decision-making solely on the basis of a composite ranking, you may end up in a program that just simply isn’t right for you.

So for the next ten days, we’re going to be looking at other factors – besides rankings and test scores – that you should take into consideration when choosing a university.  We’re hardly going to talk about the traditional measures of what makes a university “good” at all.  Our hope is to get you to start thinking about all the different qualities a university possesses, and then identify which ones matter to you.

Posts in this Series

1. Conclusion - How to Choose a U.S. University - 02 Jun
2. Activities Around a University Campus - 01 Jun
3. Check Out U.S. Universities on iTunes U - 26 May
4. Extracurricular Activities - 25 May
5. Get to Know Your Potential Professors - 21 May
6. Don't Forget Your Life! - 20 May
7. What Do You Want to See in the U.S.? - 19 May
8. How Many International Students go to your Chosen University? - 18 May
9. The Problem with University Rankings - 17 May
10. Using Facebook to Research Universities - 14 May
11. Look at the Surrounding Neighborhoods When Looking at a U.S. University - 13 May
12. How Weather Should Factor Into Your Search for a U.S. University - 12 May
13. Looking for a University in the United States: Cost of Living - 11 May
14. Looking for a University in the United States (This post)

Today the podcast covers the issue of timelines for international students interested in applying to U.S. universities.

Hope you enjoy it!

As always, comments or questions about the podcast should be directed to podcast@myuface.com.

Other Podcasts

1. Podcast: Asking Questions - 18 Jul
2. Podcast: Give Yourself Time To Complete Your Application - 13 Jun
3. Podcast: What to Do if your Application is not Accepted - 06 Jun
4. Podcast - The View from Albania - 23 May
5. Podcast: University Rankings - 16 May
6. Podcast: Timeline for Applying to a U.S. University (This post)
7. The Inaugural myUface Podcast - 02 May

Every Friday we’ll open the myUface.com mailbag and answer a question or questions from international students.  Here’s how it works:  you send us a question at blog@myuface.com, we research your question thoroughly, and then we provide an answer.  So if you have a question about anything, send it to us and we will do the work to answer it.

Today’s question:

I am interested in mastering in the dental field at an American university.  How should I send the program of my college to American dental schools?

From your question I understand that you’ve already received an undergraduate degree from a university in your home country, and you want to come to the U.S. to get an advanced degree in dentistry.  Unfortunately, this is one of those situations where American higher education probably won’t help prepare you for work in your chosen field (dentistry).

A “Master’s” for Dentistry doesn’t really exist in the U.S.  Dentistry is clinical training, which means more or less that it’s not broken up along the lines of the degree systems common in other parts of the world.  Every American state varies, but in general, although it is possible to continue studies in the dental field, it is extremely complicated.

There is no such thing as master’s in dentistry or 2 year residency in dentistry (which is common abroad). Pretty much, a student would have to come over take some undergrad courses to prepare himself for DAT (Dental Admission Test). In other words, the student pretty much starts from scratch.  Even if you are a dentist who is already practicing, when coming to the U.S. you will still have to basically start over or be in school for another 3 or 4 years depending on the state.  So if you have already finished your undergraduate work in dentistry, the U.S. may not be a good destination for continuing study.

Have a question?  E-mail us at blog@myuface.com.