World's Best Universities: Methodology

U.S.News & World Report's World's Best Universities rankings, based on the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings, identified these to be world's top universities in 2009.

Schools by Location The Top 200 Asian and Middle Eastern Australian and New Zealand British and European Canadian Schools by Subject The Top 200 Arts and Humanities Engineering and IT Life Sciences and Biomedicine Natural & Physical Sciences Social Sciences Methodologies World's Best Universities Methodology Subject Area Rankings Methodology Academic Peer Review Citations per Faculty Member Student-to-Faculty Ratio Employer Review Survey International Student and International Faculty Factors Weightings and Statistical Scores About the World's Best Universities Rankings

U.S.News & World Report's 2009 World's Best Universities rankings are based on data from the THE-QS World University Rankings. The new rankings are produced in association with QS Quacquarelli Symonds, one of the world's leading networks for top careers and education.

The 2009 World's Best Universities rankings were developed to present a multifaceted view of the relative strengths of the world's leading universities. Weightings are decided by Times Higher Education and are based on its opinion of the importance of the measured criteria balanced against the effectiveness of the indicator to evaluate the intended measure. The overall Top 200 Universities Worldwide, the Top 30 Asian Universities, the Top 30 European Universities, the Top 20 Canadian Universities, and the Top 20 Australian and New Zealand Universities rankings are compiled based on five distinct indicators. This table provides the weights that were used and a brief explanation of each of the ranking indicators.

Academic Peer Review
The academic peer review is the centerpiece of the U.S. News World's Best Universities rankings and is based on an online survey distributed to academics worldwide. Results are compiled based on three years' worth of responses totaling 9,386 in 2009. Respondents are not permitted to submit their own institution or to respond more than once (their latest response is counted). Weightings are applied both geographically and by discipline to ensure as fair a representative spread as possible.

Employer Review
Similar to the academic peer review, this indicator is based on a global online survey, this time distributed to employers. Results are again based on three years' worth of "latest response" data, totaling 3,281 in 2009. Geographical weightings are again applied to ensure fair representation from the different regions of the world.