Well, you are all right. It does not matter where your university is, rather how your university ranks. So it befits more if you compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. If you are going to compare the venerable Oxford and Cambridge to American Universities, then compare them to Ivy League schools - namely Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, yada yada yada. Besides Ivy League, there are fair number of schools that are outstanding but lesser known - Rice, Williams, SMU, Carnegie Mellon, Brandeis, Grinnell come to mind. As far as undergraduate studies is concerned, the liberal arts education, extra-curricular programs, sheer academic environment that most good schools provide in the US make their product the very best in the world. I don't know about Australian Universities to talk about them. Canadian Universities are mostly government funded, and not too many in number. Those too vary in quality - I am guessing here - UBC, Queens, UofT, Simon Frasier, University of Waterloo probably rank at top tier and might be comparable to Ivy League schools in some departmental categories. I heard some, not all, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are excellent, and some students do prefer to go there over MIT and CalTech for undergraduate level as they provide extremely rigorous mathematical training. However, do keep in mind that for the graduate level, most of them come to the US school. Also remember, going to Oxford or Harvard or Waterloo is merely a probability indicator, not guarantee, of success in later life. I know of many who got Ivy League education and are dismal failures and even more who went to so called so-so schools and became highly successful in their professional and personal life. Well, there you go, for what it's worth, mero dui kaudi ko kura.