Although I had originally thought that this university I am thinking of applying to wasn't well respected, I was wrong. One of my Birmingham people wrote,
'The OU is a very august institution indeed, and has an excellent reputation in the UK, so no worries there. It's also worth bearing in mind that Lynne Cameron is an internationally recognized leading authority in the field of metaphor research, so that would further enhance the prestige level attached to this PhD.'
One day, if I am ever British, I want to be able to say something like 'a very august institution indeed' and not have people laugh at me. Anyway, this is good news in that if I get in, it'll be killer, and bad news, in that it's less likely that I'll get in.
Japan only has three universities in the top 100 universities in the world (the last one, Tokyo Institute of Technology, just barely making it at 99) . This is sort of pathetic, I think, for a country with such a large population and so much money. FYI:
Harvard University US
Massachusetts Institute of Technology US
Cambridge University UK
Oxford University UK
Stanford University US
University of California, Berkeley US
Yale University US
California Institute of Technology US
Princeton University US
Ecole Polytechnique France
Duke University US
London School of Economics UK
Imperial College London UK
Cornell University US
Beijing University China
Tokyo University Japan
University of California, San Francisco
University of Chicago US
Melbourne University Australia
Columbia University US
Everyone now: USA! USA! USA!