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The top 50 universities by reputation 

I was drawn to apply to the University of Cambridge because enough people at school and home seemed to think that I would have a decent chance of getting in. I never really thought that I would end up there. I had only ever heard of geniuses going to Cambridge and I did not think that I stood much of a chance competing with them. 

France has always been my first choice of country for study. This is due to the quality of education, culture and life in general. So when I was in my third year at Hanoi University of Sciences, Vietnam National University, I worked hard to pass École Polytechnique’s entrance exam.

I did not speak French at all in the beginning. With about 30 other students from all over the world (for example China, Cambodia, India and Russia), we went to stay with host families in the south west of France.

As a Filipino student pursuing an Erasmus Mundus master of arts in public policy, the Central European University (CEU) has provided a perfect balance of academic inquiry, career development and socialising.

I am consistently encouraged to ask about my fellow students’ life stories, as they have such different experiences to my own. And I find that this is helping me to make better decisions, both as a student and as a future policymaker.

Youth turnout in UK general elections has declined significantly in recent decades. More than 60 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted in the 1992 election, compared with an average of about 40 per cent since 2002.

Youth turnout in the UK is among the lowest in Western Europe. For example, about double the proportion of young Swedes vote in national elections. The problem is particularly apparent among young people of low socio-economic status. Only a quarter of those who leave school with no qualifications vote, compared with three-quarters of university students. 

Top universities with the best student-to-staff ratio

Jikei University School of Medicine in Japan came in at number five in the Times Higher Education 2017 table showing the universities with the best student-to-staff ratio.

I joined the doctoral programme at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology in 2013. I came to know about UNMC from an alumnus, Dr Mahek Sharma of the BMB department. I was interested in pursuing my doctoral degree in a medical centre, and UNMC seemed to be the perfect fit for me.

Some celebrities have always taken an active interest in the education of their fans by setting up foundations and scholarships to fund university tuition fees. However, a new trend has emerged: fuelled by the connection between celebrities and fans on social media, young people have been directly asking their idols to contribute one-off payments towards their college costs.

More than half of the world’s population uses the internet and social media users have increased by 21 per cent since 2015, with 2.8 billion users reported globally in 2017.

When trying to understand the potential influence of individual universities for the general election we decided to take into account several factors: the student population by constituency in the 2011 Census, the number of UK students in a university, the location of university campuses, and how close the result of the 2015 general election was.

I was eager to make the best of an exchange semester in France by integrating myself into the Toulousain lifestyle. My exchange college was the Institut national des sciences appliquées de Toulouse (part of the Federal University of Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées).