Singapore's NUS, NTU make it to QS top 15

The twelfth edition of the QS World University Rankings states that Singapore’s leading universities have made the top 15 for the first time. The National University of Singapore (12th) is the leading Asian institution and Nanyang Technological University (13th) is right behind. Australian National University (19th) also returns to the top 20 while China’s Tsinghua University (25th) is Asia’s third-best university.

Ben Sowter, QS Head of research says: “These latest results reveal more diversity than ever in the distribution of world-class universities at the highest levels. We’re providing prospective students with the richest picture yet.”

A new approach to “citations per faculty”, a measure of research impact, has delivered fairer evaluations for universities with a strong profile in areas with lower research activity, such as arts, humanities and social sciences. Over 70 thousand (76,798) academics and 44,226 employers contributed to the rankings through the QS global surveys. QS also analysed 11.1 million research papers indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database. Three thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine institutions were considered for inclusion, and 891 ranked.

2015	2014	Top 20	Country
1	1	MIT	US
2	4	HARVARD	US
3=	2=	CAMBRIDGE	UK
3=	7	STANFORD	US
5	8	CALTECH	US
6	5=	OXFORD	UK
7	5=	UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON	UK
8	2=	IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON	UK
9	12	ETH ZURICH	CH
10	11	CHICAGO	US
11	9	PRINCETON	US
12	22	NATIONAL UNIVERSITY SINGAPORE	SG
13	39	NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY	SG
14	17=	EPFL	CH
15	10	YALE	US
16	14=	JOHNS HOPKINS	US
17	19	CORNELL	US
18	13	U PENN	US
19=	25=	AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY	AU
19=	16	KING'S COLLEGE LONDON	UK
© QS Quacquarelli Symonds 2004-2015.  *The rankings include universities from 82 countries. Thirty-four countries feature in the Top 200. The US dominates, with 49 institutions, ahead of the UK (30), Netherlands (12), Germany (11), Canada, Australia, and Japan (eight), China (seven), France, Sweden and Hong Kong (five).

Top 3 universities in Asia are from Singapore, Australia and Japan

A university ranking based on research citations plus reputational surveys of over 90,000 academics and graduate employers worldwide has listed the
National University of Singapore (NUS), the University of Melbourne and the University of Tokyo as the most successful universities in the Asia Pacific region in terms of the number of top-ten rankings.

The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings for 2014, covering 30 academic disciplines and the 200 top universities in the world, includes five universities in the region with top-ten rankings:

• National University of Singapore (NUS), which is now 5th worldwide for Chemical Engineering 
• University of Melbourne
• University of Tokyo
• Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
• Kyoto University

Other universities to make the global top ten in at least one discipline include mainland China's Tsinghua University (Materials Science), Hong Kong University, and five in Australia: ANU, Monash (Pharmacy & Pharmacology), University of Sydney, University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales.  

The University of Tokyo and the University of Kyoto were both in the top ten for Chemical Engineering. Both universities and the University of Hong Kong were also named in the top ten list for Civil and Structural Engineering. The University of Tokyo is also listed in the top ten for Mechanical, Aeronautical & Manufacturing Engineering and Physics & Astronomy, while the University of Melbourne has been recognised for Law.  

Globally, Harvard is the most successful all-round institution, ranking first in 11 disciplines, while New York University is no. 1 in the world for philosophy and Stanford for statistics. University of California, Davis is best for agriculture, the University of Wisconsin-Madison for communications and media studies, the Institute of Education for education, and University of California, Berkeley for the environmental sciences. 

"The range of institutions that are world-leading in a given discipline is much wider than we are often led to believe by overall rankings," said QS Head of research Ben Sowter. "We are conditioned to think of a handful of big-name institutions such as the Ivies and Oxbridge as being the best regardless of the subject. It may be time to challenge that received wisdom."