U.S. News & World Report Releases 2012 Rankings of World's Best
Universities
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. News
& World Report, one of the nation's leading providers of
service news and information, today released the fifth annual
edition of the World's Best Universities rankings. For the past two
years, the United Kingdom's
University of Cambridge topped the
list, but this year, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology jumped from third to first. The 2012
World's Best rankings, which include colleges and universities in
the United States and across the
globe, are available online at www.usnews.com/worldsbest.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100603/PH13717LOGO
)
The World's Best Universities rankings, updated annually by
U.S. News, are based on the 2012 QS World University
Rankings®, developed by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a leading
global career and education network. Using a different
methodology and ranking data than the well-known U.S.
News Best Colleges rankings, the World's Best Universities
rates schools on factors such as academic reputation,
the proportion of international faculty, and the
proportion of international students.
"As the job market becomes more competitive, there's a growing
interest among prospective students to attend institutions abroad,"
said U.S. News & World Report Editor and Chief Content
Officer Brian Kelly. "The World's
Best Universities rankings help students compare and select the
best schools worldwide. In addition, the rankings enable our
readers to understand more fully how well American institutions
perform when compared with other institutions of higher learning
around the world."
The World's Best Universities rankings are among the most
comprehensive of their kind and include the following lists: Top
400 Universities Worldwide, Top 100 Asian Universities, and Top 100
Latin American Universities. In addition to the regional rankings,
there are also global rankings in 25 different subject disciplines,
such as electrical engineering, accounting and finance, biological
sciences, and the newly added communication and media studies.
An in-depth methodology was used to determine the 2012 rankings.
For the Top 400 Universities, six distinct indicators of excellence
were evaluated: academic reputation, employer reputation,
faculty-student ratio, proportion of international faculty,
proportion of international students, and citations per faculty.
The two regional rankings each have distinct methodologies from the
global Top 400 to better reflect the uniqueness of those regions,
using indicators such as the specific region's academic and
employer reputations, citations per paper, and proportion of staff
with Ph.D's.
For additional information on the 2012 ranking of the World's
Best Universities, please visit www.usnews.com/worldsbest.
World's Best Universities Rankings 2012
* For the
full list of rankings, visit
www.usnews.com/worldsbest
- Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (United
States)
- University of Cambridge
(United Kingdom)
- Harvard University (United States)
- UCL (University College London) (United Kingdom)
- University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
- Imperial College London (United
Kingdom)
- Yale University (United States)
- University of Chicago (United States)
- Princeton University (United States)
- California Institute of Technology
(United States)
About U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News &
World Report is a multi-platform, digital publisher of news and
analysis, which includes the digital-only U.S. News Weekly
magazine, www.usnews.com, and www.rankingsandreviews.com. Focusing
on Health, Money, Education, Travel, Cars, and Public
Service/Opinion, U.S. News has earned a reputation as the
leading provider of service news and information that improves the
quality of life of its readers. U.S. News & World
Report's signature franchise includes its News You Can Use®
brand of journalism and its "Best" series of consumer guides
that include rankings of colleges, graduate schools, hospitals,
mutual funds, health plans, and more.
About QS Quacquarelli Symonds
QS's mission is "to
enable motivated people to fulfill their potential through
educational achievement, international mobility and career
development." Founded in 1990, today QS is the leading information
and events company specializing in the higher education sector,
worldwide. Through exclusive events, publications, research and
interactive web tools, QS links undergraduate, graduate, MBA and
executive communities around the world with recruiters and
education providers. QS's websites include:
www.topuniversities.com, www.topgradschool.com, www.topmba.com, and
www.qs.com. The QS team is diverse, made up of over 200 individuals
from 35 countries and includes internationally recognized experts
in the higher and business education arena. QS operates globally
from offices in London,
Paris, New York, Singapore, Stuttgart, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, Washington
DC, Boston, and
Johannesburg.
SOURCE U.S. News & World Report