UW News

May 9, 2013

UW ranked sixth in US and eighth in world for academic performance

News and Information

A new ranking conducted by the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) Graduate School of Informatics has determined that the University of Washington is the sixth-best university in the United States and eighth in the world based on its academic quality.

The University Ranking of Academic Performance employs six measures:

  • Number of scientific articles published and indexed by the Web of Science;
  • Research impact of these articles as measured by the number of times the articles were cited by others;
  • Sustainability and continuity of scientific productivity;
  • Research quality as measured by the impact of the journals in which articles appeared;
  • Research quality as determined by the impact of received citation quality;
  • International collaboration, measured by the total number of publications made in collaboration with foreign universities.

Information was gathered from 2,500 higher education institutions worldwide, making it one of the most comprehensive university ranking systems in the world.

Harvard University was ranked first, followed by the University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, University of California Berkeley, University of Michigan and Oxford. The UW’s ranking was behind Oxford by just six hundredths of one point.

The University of Washington has been ranked 16th in the Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and 24th by the Times (UK) Higher Education World University Rankings. It was also ranked as 46th best university by US News & World Report, and 17th best value among public colleges by Kiplinger’s.