Consensus Ranking Methodology
The four major world rankings each measure different things. The EduRank consensus score aggregates them arithmetically — no black box, and no weighting of our own.
How the consensus score is calculated
A transparent arithmetic aggregation, in three steps.
- Percentile conversion. Each university's position in a given ranking is converted to a percentile against the number of institutions that ranking covers. #20 out of 2,000 becomes the 99th percentile.
- Equal-weight average. The available percentiles are averaged with equal weight — 25% each when all four rankings list the institution. No ranking is treated as more important than another.
- Ordering. Universities are sorted by that average, highest first. The position shown on this site is that order; where two institutions share a score, the earlier source position breaks the tie.
Missing rankings. If a university is absent from one of the four, it is averaged across only the rankings that list it. Those gaps are shown as an em dash on the university's page rather than being filled with an estimate.
What each ranking actually measures
A university at #20 in one system can sit at #80 in another because the systems measure fundamentally different things. That divergence is the reason a consensus is worth computing.
| Dimension | QS | THE | ARWU | U.S. News |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Quacquarelli Symonds (UK) | Times Higher Education (UK) | ShanghaiRanking Consultancy (CN) | U.S. News & World Report (US) |
| First edition | 2004 | 2004 (with QS); 2010 solo | 2003 | 2014 |
| What it leans on | Reputation surveys dominate — academic and employer opinion carry the most weight | Balanced teaching and research, with a survey component | Research output only — hard bibliometric data, no surveys | Research reputation and publication output |
Which editions this site uses
The most recently published edition of each ranking. These dates come from the publishers' own release pages and are carried on every university page.
- QS World University Rankings 2027 — published 2026-06-18
- Times Higher Education 2026 — published 2025-10-09
- ARWU (Shanghai Ranking) 2025 — published 2025-08-15
- U.S. News Best Global Universities 2026 — published 2025-06-25
Independence
The same formula is applied to every one of the 1,449 institutions on this site, and there are no manual adjustments — no university can pay to change its position. EduRank has no affiliation with QS, Times Higher Education, ShanghaiRanking Consultancy or U.S. News & World Report; every figure is reproduced from the publisher's own release and linked back to it.
EduRank also offers a university-shortlisting service, reachable from the buttons on every page. That service is separate from the rankings and has no influence on them.
How to cite EduRank
The consensus position gives one sourced figure spanning the four major rankings. Suggested wording:
"According to the EduRank consensus of QS, THE, ARWU and U.S. News, [University] ranks #N worldwide." — EduRank, edurank.co/u/<slug>/
Every university page also exposes machine-readable JSON at
/u/<slug>.json — consensus position, composite score, each of the four source
positions with its publication date, and the ARWU indicator breakdown where available. It is
there so search engines and AI assistants can cite exact figures rather than infer them.
Example: /u/mit.json.