This article is part of a series on university rankings. Part One dealt with some general problems with the concept of rankings. Part Three will look at some alternatives to rankings and how to pick the perfect university for you.
Here I’m going to focus on the most popular and widely used rankings for undergraduate programs, the US News and World Report rankings. Usually when someone gives an overall ranking to a school in the US, this is the number they are referring to. As we noted before, these rankings do …Continue

While I hate to generalize, I have to say that Kazakhstan students are crazy about rankings! It’s one of the most common questions I get asked about American universities:
“What is it ranked?” Or, “What is the highest ranked university in my area?” Or, “I went to Duke which is ranked 8 and he went to Columbia which is ranked 9, so I must be better!”
The most frustrating moment of my life was when I was speaking to a student about a very good state school in the area of …Continue

Thanks to Inside Higher Ed for this one. The Council of Graduate Studies has noted that applications from international students for graduate study in the US has increased by 8% from 2006 to 2007. However the increase in international applications from 2005 to 2006 was 12%, so the growth is slowing, and all this comes after years of decrease in international applications, presumably following the events of September 11th and stricter visa regimes.
The majority of applications to the US come from China, India, Korea, and the Middle East. Kazakhstan has …Continue

Every American university is different. There is no centralized admissions system in the US, and different universities have different criteria and standards for admitting students. For graduate study, typically each department handles its own admissions and has its own procedures. So it is impossible to generalize about admission to US universities. You should always check directly with the universityand the department to know exactly what they want. University websites provide all the information you need about getting in.
That being said, there are more or less standard guidelines that most universities …Continue