The Best Universities in the World in 2013

Who would care about the best universities in the world? Certainly, a lot would, especially students and education stakeholders. It is because universities and colleges around world strive to become one of the best that they continue to improve the way they provide education to persons deserving it. I, personally, also care. While I’m an education news sender, info breaker and essay writer for you,” I still do care which university is the best in the world.

So, which schools could be considered as best universities in the world?

I have my own ranking of the best universities, but it would be deemed subjective as it is only based on my perception. My own list could be different from yours, and we could forever debate on the differences in the rankings we made.

I, however, don’t have worry about that. I’d rather leave the rankings to groups of people who are known to be objective in this line of work. One of these groups is education and career network Quacquarelli Symonds. Since 2004, the group has been publishing the QS World University Rankings. In September last year, the group published the 2013 World University Rankings. Can you guess who made it to the top 10?

Well, four of the best universities in world are situated where I am now, in the United Kingdom. They are the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University College London and Imperial College London. These UK universities are considered more or less at par with seven universities from the United States (two were tied at 10th), namely: Harvard University, Stanford University, Yale University, California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and University of Chicago. How did they fare against each other, using the 2012 ranking as a comparison)? Well, here goes the official ranking as published by QS.

1) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2012: 1st) 

2) Harvard University (2012: 3rd)

3) University of Cambridge (2012: 2nd)

4) University College London (2012: 4th)

5) Imperial College London (2012: 6th)

6) University of Oxford (2012: 5th)

7) Stanford University (2012: 15th)

8) Yale University (2012: 7th)

9) University of Chicago (2012: 8th)

10) California Institute of Technology (2012: 10th) and Princeton University (2012: 9th)

As we can see, MIT managed to defend its position as the best university in the world, as per QS World University Ranking. Harvard managed to outrank Cambridge in the latest edition of the ranking, after placing third in 2012. Interestingly, for the past three years, the top 3 universities in the world according to the rankings have been MIT, Harvard and Cambridge.

While UCL retained its position, Imperial College London and Oxford had their places switch at 5th and 6th. Making a great jump in the rankings at 7th is Stanford University, which was 15th in 2012 and 11th in 2011. Sliding a place in the rankings are University of Chicago and Princeton University. The latter was tied at 10th with California Institute of Technology, which managed to retain its place.

Interestingly, no university in the 2012 edition dropped out in the 2013 list. It is only that one school, Stanford University, managed to squeeze between them.

But how did the researchers of the 2013 QS World University Rankings arrived at the results? Did they create the list using their premonition and inkling? Of course not!

The researchers used solid criteria to come up with rankings, which after all, included around 800 universities from all over the world. The criteria or indicators are:

• ACADEMIC REPUTATION (40%). Based on a survey of academics with over 62,000 responses from all over the world.

• EMPLOYER REPUTATION (10%). Based on a survey of graduate employers with over 28,000 global responses.

• STUDENT-TO-FACULTY RATIO (20%). Indicates “commitment to teaching,” which should correlate with the level of teaching quality.

• CITATIONS PER FACULTY (20%). Based on number of citations per faculty. Citations are most widely accepted measure of research strength.

• INTERNATIONAL FACULTY RATIO (5%) Indicates global diversity of the academic faculty

• INTERNATIONAL STUDENT RATIO (5%) Indicates global diversity of the student community.

If you want to see how your university or dream school has fared in the rankings, feel free to take a look this official list of the 2013 QS World University Rankings.