QS World University Ranking

The Criteria

What criteria does QS Stars use when rating universities, and why?

There has been much discussion around what attributes form a world-class university, particularly with the growing popularity of university rankings and the criteria used to assess universities worldwide.

Much criticism has been directed to the criteria used in rankings and other assessments, based on the argument that universities are different to one another and therefore need to be assessed on a range of categories that recognize distinct strengths.

The following criteria, the basis for QS Stars ratings, were selected as the key pillars of what makes a world class university, taking into account a number of factors that are often overlooked in university rankings and other assessments.

Research

Indicators considered here include domestic assessments of research quality, productivity (i.e. number of papers published), citations (i.e. how recognized and referred to those papers are by other academics) and awards (e.g. Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals).

Teaching

A key role of a university is the nurture of tomorrow’s finest minds, inspiring the next generation of potential research academics. Typical indicators here are domestic teaching quality assessments, collation of student feedback, national student surveys and student faculty ratios.

Employability

Graduate employability encompasses more than academic strength, focusing on ‘work-readiness’ – the ability to work effectively in a multi-cultural team, to deliver presentations, to manage people and projects. Common indicators in this area are surveys of employers, graduate employment rates and average graduate salaries.

Facilities

University infrastructure is an indicator which enables students to know what to expect from their university experience. Indicators such as sporting and medical facilities, number of students societies are considered within this criterion.

Internationalization

Here, effective indicators could be the proportion of international students and staff, the numbers of exchange students arriving and departing, the number and strength of international partnerships with other universities or the number of graduates pursuing further study at overseas universities.

Innovation

Innovation, the output of the universities activities and findings to economy, society and culture, has become increasingly relevant for universities.

Engagement

An effective indicator showing the university’s contribution to its local community.

Access

This area looks at the accessibility of the university to students. It looks at areas such as scholarships and bursaries, disability access and gender balance.

Source link: http://www.topuniversities.com/qs-stars/qs-stars-methodology

QS RANK	SCHOOL NAME	COUNTRY	QS STARS RATING	OVERALL
1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	United States		100.00
2	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom		99.78
3	Harvard University	United States		99.15
4	UCL (University College London)	United Kingdom		98.69
5	University of Oxford	United Kingdom		98.57
6	Imperial College London	United Kingdom		98.31
7	Yale University	United States		97.48
8	University of Chicago	United States		96.27
9	Princeton University	United States		95.37
10	California Institute of Technology (Caltech)	United States		95.05
11	Columbia University	United States		94.68
12	University of Pennsylvania	United States		94.50
13	ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)	Switzerland		92.84
14	Cornell University	United States		92.08
15	Stanford University	United States		91.68
16	Johns Hopkins University	United States		91.18
17	University of Michigan	United States		91.17
18	McGill University	Canada		90.43
19	University of Toronto	Canada		89.64
20	Duke University	United States		89.50
21	University of Edinburgh	United Kingdom		89.24
22	University of California, Berkeley (UCB)	United States		88.12
23	University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong S.A.R., China		87.89
24	Australian National University	Australia		87.61
25	National University of Singapore (NUS)	Singapore		87.24
26	King’s College London (KCL)	United Kingdom		87.12
27	Northwestern University	United States		85.44
28	University of Bristol	United Kingdom		85.36
29	Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	Switzerland		85.08
30	The University of Tokyo	Japan		84.95
31	University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)	United States		84.62
32	The University of Manchester	United Kingdom		84.16
33	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	Hong Kong S.A.R., China		83.48
34	Ecole normale supérieure, Paris	France		83.28
35	Kyoto University	Japan		83.27
36	The University of Melbourne	Australia		83.16
37	Seoul National University	South Korea		82.19
38	University of Wisconsin-Madison	United States		81.43
39	The University of Sydney	Australia		81.31
40	The Chinese University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong S.A.R., China		80.09
41	Ecole Polytechnique	France		79.55
42	Brown University	United States		79.52
43	New York University (NYU)	United States		78.94
44	Peking University	China		78.75
45	University of British Columbia	Canada		78.55
46	The University of Queensland	Australia		78.22
47	Nanyang Technological University (NTU)	Singapore		77.69
48	Tsinghua University	China		77.51
49	Carnegie Mellon University	United States		77.41
50	Osaka University	Japan		76.84

Source link: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2012