QS Survey Nominations Procedure and FAQs
QS invites institutions who are hoping to appear in any of the QS Rankings to supply both academic and employer nominees who will be sent the relevant reputational survey to complete to build up our database for our reputational indicators. Academic nominees are unable to vote for their own institution.
PROCESS FOR SUBMITTING YOUR NOMINATIONS AND COMMUNICATING WITH NOMINEES
We can accept nominations by one of two methods:
1) Via a CSV uploaded to our QS HUB platform. You must use the pre-defined templates found here:
2) Via our sign-up facilities:
Universities cannot use both systems.
You must use our template email when seeking consent from potential respondents or when sharing the sign-up platform with potential respondents. They should at no point feel coerced into participating or being influenced by your institution.
NOMINATION LISTS
In order to comply with data protection guidance and to be seen to be following fair procedure, you must use the “Consent email for nomination lists” email template found here:
This email template should be sent on its own and not accompany any other communication from the university.
Nomination lists are limited to 400 nominations for each list. You must use the pre-defined CSV templates to upload your lists onto our QS HUB platform QS HUB. Submitted email addresses must use English characters only. When you upload your list, you will be required to indicate that you have the appropriate consent before you are able to submit their details to us. You must obtain the consent of those based in the EU and QS strongly advises you to take the same approach for all contacts.
SURVEY SIGN-UP
If you would rather use our survey sign-up facility where individuals who consent can give us their details themselves, then you must use the relevant “Consent email for Sign Up” template emails found here:
This email template should be sent on its own and not accompany other communication from the university; we ask that the template is used to ensure transparency and neutrality in how universities approach contacts for our reputational surveys.
A university may contact any number of individuals to access the sign-up facility. However, the number of individual responses from a university’s contact list will be capped at 400. QS will send a notification once a university exceeds 350 responses, at which point the university should cease contacting further participants.
TIMEFRAMES
If a university misses the data collection deadline for submitting their lists, or sends out links to the sign-up facility too late, QS cannot guarantee that their nominees will receive the survey in time to be able to reply before the cut-off date for the analysis for that year’s cycle.
Survey responses received after the date that the data is pulled for analysis will not be lost but will be counted in the following year’s analysis.
SANCTIONS
A university found to be in breach of QS’ guidelines by seeming to coach responses for the institution from nominees (for example by deviating from the prescribed templates without seeking guidance and permission from QS) or engaging in another unethical practice may be subject to sanctions. These could range from exclusion from the rankings for a cycle, the removal of that year’s “votes” or other measures which QS and the QS advisory board deem suitable. We have had to implement the use of prescribed email communication templates to ensure compliance with data protection legislation and to ensure transparency and neutrality in how universities approach contacts for our reputational surveys.
SELECTION OF CONTACTS
QS will use your nomination list or nominations received via sign-up for two years – the year of submission and one additional year. Therefore, you do not need to resend us contacts sent last year.
Definitions used:
Employers – people who make hiring decisions at a company. You can have multiple people at one company because different managers may recruit for different positions or have a different perspective on which universities produce good graduates. It is not a good idea to submit info@ or other generic email addresses as in our experience emails sent to such addresses are usually ignored. If you are unsure of someone’s job title or phone number or other such fields, these can be left blank but submissions with too much missing data may be rejected as suspicious.
Academics – academic respondents need to have knowledge of research in their field of expertise. Often this will mean they are an academic, but this could also be research or library staff. It is unlikely that administrative staff would meet this criterion.