World University Rankings

The four most famous international university league tables

The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2025, features over 2000 institutions across 115 countries and territories and assesses research-intensive universities using five key pillars: teaching (29.5%), research environment (29%), research quality (30%), international outlook (7.5%), and industry (4%) (Times Higher Education, 2024a).

The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2025 features over 1500 universities across 105 higher education systems. Its results are based on nine metrics: academic reputation (30%), citations per faculty (20%), employer reputation (15%), faculty-student ratio (10%), international faculty ratio (5%), international students ratio (5%), sustainability (5%), employment outcomes (5%), and international research network (5%) (IDP Vietnam, no date).

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) ranks more than 2500 universities annually, and the best 1000 are published. ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities: number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded™ and Social Sciences Citation Index™ in the Web of Science™, and per capita performance of a university (ShanghaiRanking, 2024).

The US News & World Report: 2024-2025 Best Global Universities Rankings ranks over 2250 institutions across 104 countries. Its results are based on 13 indicators such as global research reputation (12.5%), regional research reputation (12.5%), number of publications that are among the 10% most cited (12.5%), percentage of total publications that are among the 10% most cited (10%), publications (10%), normalised citation impact (10%) and more (Morse and Wellington, 2024).

1 Oxford

5 Cambridge

9 Imperial College London

22 UCL

29 Edinburgh

36 King’s College London

50 LSE

53 Manchester

78 Bristol

87 Glasgow

93 Birmingham

98 Sheffield

106 Warwick

115 Southampton

123 Leeds

136 Nottingham

141 Queen Mary University of London

146 York

157 Newcastle

160 Liverpool

168 Lancaster

172 Durham

172 Exeter

185 St Andrews

191 Leicester

201-250 Cardiff

201-250 Queen’s University Belfast

201-250 Aberdeen

201-250 Reading

201-250 Surrey

201-250 Sussex

251-300 Bath

251-300 East Anglia

Source: Times Higher Education (2024b).

THE World University Rankings 2025: Best universities for overall in the UK