Hello and welcome to the latest IntroAmerica feature on college rankings!

Here we show you two different rankings of major colleges side-by-side. This is to help you and your family to evaluate your many choices when it comes to higher education. This month, we feature the Times Higher Education’s list, and Shanghai Jiao Tong’s list of top universities.

Remember, more important than the prestige of a college is its ability to suit your personal and academic needs.

Times Higher Education: The top universities rankings employ 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available. This includes looking at such factors as teaching (the learning environment), international outlook (staff and students), industry income (innovation), research (volume, income and reputation), and citations (research influence).

Shanghai Jiao Tong: Universities are ranked by several indicators of academic or research performance: alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals; highly cited researchers; papers published in Nature and Science; papers indexed in major citation indices; and the per capita academic performance of an institution. For each indicator, the highest scoring institution is assigned a score of 100. Other institutions are then calculated as a percentage of the top score. The distribution of data for each indicator is examined for any significant distorting effect. Scores for each indicator are weighted to arrive at a final overall score for an institution. An institution’s rank reflects the number of institutions that sit above it.