September 12, 2017
Two New Rankings List the UW among Top Universities
The University of Washington is ranked #25 in this year’s Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. While other top U.S. universities have slipped in the rankings, the UW maintains its #25 position for the second year in a row. For the first time in the history of the THE rankings, neither of the top two universities are in the U.S.
The THE World University Rankings were first published in 2004. This year’s rankings list 1,000 universities around the world.
Five categories contribute to a university’s ranking score. Of these, teaching (measured by reputation survey, student-faculty ratio, and number of doctoral degrees), research (measured by reputation survey, research income, and publication count), and citations combine to account for 90 percent of the score. The UW scores particularly highly in the citation category, measured as the number of times a university’s researchers are cited by other scholars. The UW’s #17 ranking in citations, with a score of 99.0 out of 100, contributes to its high overall score. In contrast, the UW’s scores in international outlook and industry income—which together account for 10 percent of the overall ranking—are lower in comparison with other top universities.
More information about the Times Higher Ed methodology is available on their website.
The UW is also ranked highly on this year’s U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges list, coming in at #56 among national universities and #18 among public universities. While this represents a slight drop from last year’s #16 ranking among public universities, it continues a long run of being listed among the top 20.
The U.S. News rankings are calculated using seven categories of data: graduation and retention rates; assessment surveys of academic peers and high school guidance counselors; faculty resources; admissions selectivity; per-student spending; performance relative to predicted graduation rate; and alumni donations. Along with the overall university rankings, U.S. News also calculates several more specific lists. The UW ranked highly for undergraduate engineering programs (#11 among doctorate-granting public universities), best colleges for veterans (#11 among public universities), and undergraduate business programs (#14 among public universities).
More information about the U.S. News methodology is available on their website.
The UW’s recognition in these rankings follows the Academic Ranking of World Universities (which ranked the UW #13 in the world) and the Center for World University Rankings (which gave the UW top-10 rankings in 45 subject categories), both published earlier in 2017.