Top QS Ranked Colleges in USA: Have you ever heard of QS Ranking? Of course, you must have heard of it when checking out for colleges to take admission. QS University Ranking is a portfolio of comparative university rankings compiled by global higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds. It is used to rank colleges and universities according to their performance in terms of education, facilities, acceptance rate, placement rate, and many other factors. In this article, we are going to talk about the Top QS Ranked Colleges in USA that you can consider if you are looking to study abroad in the USA.
What is QS World University Ranking?
The QS World University Ranking was first issued about 19 years ago in partnership with Times Higher Education. Now, It is only QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) that conducts research, compares, and produces the results in the form of rankings for thousands of universities and colleges across the world.
The QS World University Rankings is a comparative ranking of the universities in the global higher education domain as analyzed by the QS. The QS World University Rankings are based on subjects, four regional rankings including Latin America, Asia, Europe, Central Asia, and the Arab Union, the QS MBA rankings, and the QS Best Student Cities Ranking.
The QS World Universities are some of the most widely read and viewed universities in the world. The process of extracting the list of QS World University Rankings is shared in the upcoming section.
QS World University Methodologies
In this section, we are going to talk about the methodologies that are considered for getting the Top QS Ranked Colleges in the USA. The ranking agency uses these methodologies to segregate the colleges and universities in different categories and rank them in a list.
Some essential factors that are emphasized in the result of the QS World University Rankings are academic performance and reputation, citations based on faculty, student/faculty ratio, graduation rate, acceptance rate, international student ratio, employer reputation, and so on. Let’s learn about them in detail in the sections that follow:
- Academic Performance and Reputation: Academic reputation is a significant factor in determining the QS World University Rankings. The academic reputation of the university can be judged by previous respondents, contact information lists from universities based on Surveys, registration or sign-up facilities, and so forth. The QS World University Rankings academic reputation index consists of 30 per cent weightage.
- Citations Per Faculty Rate: The Citations Per Faculty Rate or score generally contributes 20 percent to the World University Ranking administered by QS. The Citations Per Faculty is typically a measurement of the relative intensity and volume of citations or research happening at the university based on the university’s size.
- Faculty/Student Ratio: This statistic shows how many full-time faculty or staff members there are for every admitted student. The ratio of faculty to students has a 10% impact on university rankings.
- International Research Network: The role of the International Research Network in the rankings of QS World University is merely 10 per cent. Normally, QS uses Scorpus data to indicate and assess the degree of international openness based on the research collaboration for each evaluated university.
- Employer Reputation: The major international surveys for graduate employers typically identify the employer’s reputation. The surveys ask employers about the universities and colleges that are producing top-quality graduates for employment. The Employer Reputation section has a significant hand of 20 per cent in determining the rankings.
List of Top QS Ranked Colleges in USA
We have gone through the introduction, insights, and measurement of the top QS Ranked Colleges in USA, it is time to proceed further and learn a little more about QS. Here, the topic that we are going to cover is QS-ranked colleges.
The 20th edition of the QS World University or Colleges rankings includes 1,500 universities from 104 different locations. This year, QS has gone for three brand new metrics, including Sustainability, the international research network, and Employment Outcomes. The results have been drawn on the basis of approximately 17.5 million academic papers as well as 2,40,000 expert opinions (academic faculty and employees).
The list of the TOP QS-ranked colleges based on the rankings for 2024 is shared in the section below.
- Rank 1: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, United States)
- Rank 2: University of Cambridge (Cambridge, United Kingdom)
- Rank 3: University of Oxford (Oxford, United Kingdom)
- Rank 4: Harvard University (Cambridge, United States)
- Rank 5: Stanford University (Standford, United States)
- Rank 6: Imperial College London (London, United Kingdom)
- Rank 7: ETH Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland)
- Rank 8: National University of Singapore (Singapore, Singapore)
- Rank 9: UCL (London, United Kingdom)
QS Ranked Colleges Overall Score
Quacqurelli Symonds (QS) typically ranks the university based on the marks attained from the overall offered percentage (100). The scores that the top five universities have obtained in the QS World University Rankings for 2024 are seen between 98.1 and 100 per cent.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, commonly known as MIT, has ranked first, obtaining 100 percent of the overall score, followed by the University of Cambridge, which has the second-highest score of 99.2 per cent. The third-highest score of the QS World University ranking is 98.9 per cent. A detail description of the scores of the 2024 QS World University rankings is listed in the table below.
Ranking-wise (QS World University 2024) | Percentage (100) |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 100 |
University of Cambridge | 99.2 |
University of Oxford | 98.9 |
Harvard University | 98.3 |
Stanford University | 98.1 |
Imperial College London | 97.8 |
ETH Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland) | 93.3 |
In order to know the complete list of the Top QS Ranked Colleges in USA 2024, one can reach out to the Quacuarelli Symond (QS) portal.
What is there at QS portal for Students?
The online QS Portal is an online platform where the students can check the ranking of various universities around the world. Apart from being a platform for showcasing the ranking of the universities, the platform can also be used by the students to look for universities in the field they are willing to pursue their higher education.
Through a free social exam preparation platform, QS also assists students in getting ready for the admission tests. This makes it possible for applicants to attain the necessary level in order to increase their chances of being accepted into foreign universities.