Every year, parents and students refer to university rankings for trusted guidance in their search for the most suitable university. University rankings are a major influence in most student’s decisions on their choice of university. Highly ranked universities use these rankings to show off their strengths and also work on areas where they rank poorly.

In this article, you would find tips on how to use information from university rankings to decide the best university that meets your expectations and ambitions.

When deciding your choice of university, you must first understand that what matters is what you consider important to your university experience. This means that if research quality, university’s reputation or teaching quality is a greater priority for you, then you should filter your search for universities to meet those criteria.

How To Use University Rankings

University rankings can be used as a shortlisting tool, to declutter your university search list.

A common way to use these rankings as a shortlisting tool is to filter by study destinations. Narrowing your ranking results down to a particular location would allow you to focus and research on universities that rank higher in these locations.

Filtering university rankings results to your desired course of study is also an effective way to use university ranking information.

Once you decide on your course of study, you can then sort the ranking information to find the best universities for your field of study. In this case, you can browse by subject ranking to view the top-ranking universities in various fields.

Typically, the idea of university rankings is to show the strengths and performance of selected universities to help you, as a student, to select the best institution for your higher education.

From time to time, different ranking bodies publish their assessment of various universities for a particular year. These universities are assessed on a range of factors that are calculated to make up an overall ranking score. Various ranking bodies adopt different methods of assessment, and as such, an institution may perform better in some ranks and poorly in others.

A popular university ranking system is the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking. THE rankings are based on five major categories: Teaching, Research, Research Influence, International Outlook and Innovation. These categories have their separate percentage weighting that makes up the overall ranking score. Teaching Quality, Research and Research Influence (Citations) account for 30% individually in the total ranking score, International Outlook and Innovation, on the other hand, are assessed as 7.5% and 2.5% of the total ranking score respectively.

The QS World Ranking of Universities is also another popular university ranking that assesses universities performance based on six factors. Similar to THE World Ranking, the QS ranking assigns all six categories their different percentage weighting to make up the overall ranking score. Academic reputation counts for 40%, Citation per faculty and Student-to-faculty ratio are assigned 20% each, Employer reputation which assesses graduate employability makes up 10%, while international faculty ratio and international student ratio accounts for 5% each of the overall ranking score.

Because various university ranking bodies adopt different assessment criteria, you would find some rankings more useful than others. This means you should filter the information provided to suit your specific needs to allow you to compare the performances of these universities.

You should also remember that university rankings should be used as a tool in your research for a choice of university and not the sole factor deciding your choice of university.

In addition to university rankings, speaking to current or past students from universities you are interested in and viewing their social media accounts and websites, would give you an insight regarding important details, like study life or university’s culture, that may not be highlighted in these rankings. These details would help you choose a university that suits your needs and priorities.

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