I am new to this website. The past couple days, I browsed through most of the articles in this BBS. There are a surprising amount of postings on college rankings, most of them by Chinese students from different colleges. Everybody's entitled to his opinion, I have no problem with that.
But to be honest, I haven't seen many Chinese students actually determined to be on the scientific frontier. More often than not, they are what I call opportunist researchers. They care less about the science itself, instead they seek the immediate reward of their education. A 6-figure job is alot more enticing than a college professionship for most of them. And the ones who actually hold faculty positions, sadly are in it for the Green Card.
I am not pointing fingers or calling names. But ask yourself, are you in it for the money (GC) or for the scietific truth? Would you jump ship if there's a 150K job up for the take?
I saw a PBS special a long time ago about a math profession at Princeton who had lived in solitude for 7 years just to solve a problem. If you can measure up to that, then you understand what all those great schools represent. Otherwise, please stop the senseless postings 'coz you don't have the bragging rights about those schools.