Six Pakistani institutes among world's top universities

National University of Science and Technology (NUST) tops the list among Pakistani institutes and is the only one included in the 501-550 band. Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) follow NUST but are ranked among top 700 universities.

University of Karachi (UoK), University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Lahore and University of Lahore too are named among top 700 institutes.

The statement issued by QS says that at least 74,651 academics and 37,781 employers contributed to the rankings through the QS global surveys, the largest of their kind. QS analyzed 10.3 million research papers and 66.3 million citations, indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database. Over 3,800 institutions were considered for inclusion and 916 ranked.

The QS World University Rankings are designed to help prospective students make informed comparisons of leading universities around the world. Based on six performance indicators, the ranking assesses university performance across four areas: research, teaching, employability and internationalization.

This year’s Highlights

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is the world’s top university for the fifth year.

Stanford, 2nd (previously 3=) and Harvard, 3rd (previously 2nd) follow.

US institutions hold all top-three places for the first time since 2004/5.

Western European institutions consistently suffer drops, particularly the United Kingdom and Germany. Cambridge drops to fourth.

Russia and South Korea rise significantly (latter has 16 top-500 universities compared to 13 last year).
China continues to progress, with Tsinghua (24th) rising to its highest-ever position.

National University of Singapore (12th) remains the leading Asian institution.

Australia and Canada increase their representation in the top 200, with nine universities apiece, one more than last year.

Latin America struggles, but sees an institution in the top 100 for the first time. Universidad de Buenos Aires (85th) occupies the highest rank ever achieved by a university from the region.