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Which universities have the most top-ranked programs in the world?
03 Apr 2018
It will be hard, and most likely impossible to pick one university as the overall best in the world.
There are far too many yardsticks – research, student satisfaction, reputation among employers, etc – even if one could come up with the most sophisticated calculation to combine them all. On top of that, there is a seemingly infinite list of rankings and sub-rankings to add to the mixture.
And if you’re an international student without the option of being able to visit the universities you are interested in, things get a little fuzzier still (pro tip: focus on the student satisfaction rate, as one of our writers argue). Furthermore, there are areas where rankings alone are just incapable of helping!
UK-based higher education analytics company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), however, is suggesting one approach: Using subjects.
QS crunched data from hundreds of universities worldwide to see which had the strongest performance in 48 different subjects, which ranged from archaeology to computer science to nursing.
Four components – Academic reputation, Employer reputation, Research citations per paper and H-index i.e. the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar – were used to come up with the results for each of the subject rankings, with weightings adapted for each discipline. The full methodology can be found here.
Guess which university is the most over-achieving of them all? Source: Unsplash
It aims to “help prospective students identify the world’s leading schools in their chosen field”.
The result? There are 10 universities that perform consistently well in the top 10 places of these subject rankings.
Here they are:
| No. | University | Country | No. of Top 10 Programs |
Top 10 programs include |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| =9 | National University of Singapore | Singapore | 11 | Civil & Structural Engineering, Chemistry, Pharmacy and Pharmacology |
| =9 | Yale University | US | 11 | Law, Medicine, Nursing |
| 8 | London School of Economics (LSE) | UK | 13 | Business and Management Studies, Development Studies, Social Policy and Administration |
| 7 | University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) |
US | 14 | Chemistry, Communication and Media Studies, Psychology |
| 6 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) |
US | 24 | Art and Design, Computer Science, Linguistics |
| 5 | Stanford University | US | 32 | Biological Sciences, Economics and Econometrics, Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering |
| =3 | University of California, Berkeley |
US | 34 | Architecture, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences |
| =3 | Harvard University | US | 34 | Accounting and Finance, Business and Management, Economics and Econometrics |
| 2 | University of Oxford | UK | 35 | Anatomy and Physiology, Classics and Ancient History, Politics and International Studies |
| 1 | University of Cambridge | UK | 37 | Anthropology, English Language and Literature, History |
Source: CNBC/QS
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