QS Grad School Guide Review - Part 2

This post is a follow up post to the post Grad School Guide Review Part 1. Last time, I have reviewed 3 out of the 7 articles that I found interesting. In this post, I will finish up the review for the remaining 4 articles. The overall impression up to now is that the QS grad school guide is quite normal. It has a mix of good and bad articles.

Article 4 - The best of the best (p.58)
This is another interesting article to read for those who are planning to go to grad school. QS performs an evaluation on universities around the world every year to see which universities are the best. You can find the universities standing for 2013 here.  In their findings, it shown that universities like MIT, Stanford, Harvard, University of California-Berkeley and Oxford continuously make it to the top ten list in various different area. Unfortunately, the rank of University of Toronto is 19 overall, whereas McGill was ranked 18. You really got us, McGill. Perhaps, people at UofT should start working harder (including me)?

Article 5 - Top Ten Cities (p.64)
Yet, another interesting article to read but I wouldn't suggest choosing your university basing on cities. QS performed an evaluation on different cities in search for the top ten cities for studying. They ranked different cities based on the following criteria - universities ranking, student mix, quality of life, employer activity and affordability. They found the following 10 cities to be most suited for studying (from worst to best): Montreal, Dublin (Ireland), Berlin, Zurich (Switzerland), Sydney (Australia), Vienna (Austria), Melbourne, Boston, London and, surprisingly, Paris. This information is good to know but personally I would pick the place of my studies basing on opportunities. Our primary purpose as students is not to stay in a good city but to carve out better future for ourselves.

Article 6 - Admission Test (p.75)
This is a good article for students who are planning to come to North America to purse their university education, in particular graduate studies. It introduces the reader to 5 common standardized test in North America - GMAT (for MBA), GRE (for general graduate studies), TOEFL (English test), IELTS (English test) and LSAT (for law school). The articles also includes additional details regarding the test which is useful to know.

Article 7 - Subject Guide (p.117)
This subject guide offers a quick overview on how an overall area looks like. There is nothing too special about the articles. For Engineering section, it was a good read for me and it seems that the information and advices provided are alright. I did not went through other areas since I wouldn't know how accurate are the information presented. Read with caution.

To make a conclusion, the guide is just a normal guide. It is mixed with useful and useless information. This might mislead some prospective graduate students. Make sure you search online to do more research. Article 3, 4 and 6 are three useful articles that I have come across, which I would recommend others to take a look at them.