MIT is the most-buzzed about university on the Internet, beating out its Massachusetts neighbor Harvard for the top spot.
The Global Language Monitor's TrendTopper MediaBuzz rankings measure the brand equity of 210 universities and 200 colleges, using data from social media, the blogosphere, and more than 175,000 print and electronic media outlets.
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It's the first time a technological institution has come in first in the rankings, conducted every nine months. MIT propelled itself to the top through the announcement of its OpenCourseWare program, which allows students around the world to take advantage of MIT course offerings and earn certificates, free of charge.
"The higher education world is in the midst of a major upheaval that has only begun to sort itself out," said Paul JJ Payack, Global Language Monitor president. "You can't have an institution of MIT's stature give away its product for free, or millions of students opting for on-line schools or educations provided by for-profit organization, and of course the globalization of higher ed and not record significant change."
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The top 10 was rounded out by the University of Chicago, Columbia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell, UCLA, Stanford, Yale and University of Texas-Austin.
The complete ranking of the top 25 are listed below.
- 1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 2. Harvard University
- 3. University of Chicago
- 4. Columbia University
- 5. University of Wisconsin - Madison
- 6. Cornell University
- 7. University of California - Los Angeles
- 8. Stanford University
- 9. Yale University
- 10. University of Texas - Austin
- 11. University of Washington
- 12. University of Pennsylvania
- 13. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
- 14. University of California - Berkeley
- 15. Princeton University
- 16. Ohio State University - Columbus
- 17. University of California - Davis
- 18. Indiana University - Bloomington
- 19. Virginia Tech
- 20. New York University
- 21. Duke University
- 22. University of California - San Diego
- 23. Georgia Institute of Technology
- 24. Johns Hopkins University
- 25. University of Virginia
Which universities to do you hear a lot of buzz about online? Sound off in the comments.
BONUS: Top 10 Social Media-Savvy Universities
1. Harvard University
Harvard -- which has more than 1.6 million fans on Facebook and 107,000 Twitter followers -- posts everything from news about its latest research to video footage of its men's basketball team winning the Ivy League championship.
Click here to view this gallery.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, xxz114
This story originally published on Mashable here.
