KU ranked 86th in the QS World University Ranking 2018

The university has succeeded in keeping its upward momentum for five consecutive years, entering the top 80 for the first time among private universities in Korea.

Korea University is ranked 86th in the World University Ranking 2018 released by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), the British rating agency of universities around the world. KU enters the top 80 for the first time in its history, taking the highest place among private universities in Korea. Compared to 2013 when the university was ranked 145th, it is 59 places higher, maintaining an upward trend for five years in a row. Since it entered the top 100 for the first time in 2016, it has successfully kept its momentum moving up the rankings.

To collect the data for the rankings, a total of 4,763 universities around the world are assessed based on the following six criteria: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio, and international student ratio.

Regarding employer reputation, KU is ranked 58th, eight places higher than last year. Even in other university assessments conducted by Korean rating agencies, KU has succeeded in maintaining the top position among other schools in terms of graduates’ employability and their social reputation. In the survey conducted by the British agency, the university stands tall among the private universities in Korea, outperforming Sungkyunkwan University (69th) and Yonsei University (71st).

In regards to citation per faculty, the university is ranked 365th, 18 places higher than before. It seems that the university’s continuous effort to develop its research capacities has been highly recognized. In fact, the university has focused on having a balance in its research management system, effectively allocating tasks, and projects to both the office of Research Management and the office of Research Planning since the inauguration of its Executive Vice President for Research. In addition, by launching the KU-Future Research Grant (KU-FRG) project, the university has tried to create a research climate in which its faculties and students can do their research without any of the strings that are usually attached to grant-in-aid offered by universities. These efforts are expected to be a strong motivational factor for the university’s research staff and eventually become a driving force behind the university’s growth on the global stage.

Ranked 321st, the university made a leap in the ranking regarding international student ratio, 58 places higher than the previous year. Since its 100th anniversary in 2005, the university has worked hard to truly be a global university under the slogan Global KU. As a result, the university currently has approximately 5,900 international students from 115 countries enrolled, which makes it the biggest global campus in the country. The university’s annual summer campus is also one of the achievements that the university has made in an effort to become a global school. The summer campus invites prestigious professors from world-class universities, which, so far, has attracted about 2,000 students from 300 universities around the world. Ranked 91st, KU has kept the similar position to last year (90th) in terms of academic reputation. This also reaffirms its reputation recognized by the global academia.

Like last year, the first, second, and third places were taken by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, and Harvard University, respectively. Among the private universities in Korea, Sungkyunkwan University is ranked 100th, followed by Yonsei University (107th), and Hanyang University (151st).

Meanwhile, in the QS World University Rankings by Subject released last March, KU entered the top 50 for the first time in its history in terms of science and engineering subjects. By placing itself within the top 50 in seven subject areas and between 50th and 100th in 15 subject areas, the university kept first place among the private universities in Korea for the third consecutive year. Based on these remarkable achievements the university has made in assessments done by global rating agencies, it seems that the university has solidly paved a way to become one of the top universities in the world.