Aims
The Academic Reputation (AR) indicator measures the reputation of institutions and their programmes by asking academic experts to nominate universities based on their subject area of expertise. Pioneered by QS in 2004, it asks the question: which universities are demonstrating academic excellence?
To answer this we collect and distil the collective intelligence of academics from around the world via our Academic Survey, evaluating nominations for approximately 7000 institutions each year.
The indicator not only illuminates the quality of an institution's research, but also their approach to academic partnerships, their strategic impact, their educational innovativeness and the impact they have made on education and society at large.
The indicator is the centrepiece of almost all of the rankings across the QS portfolio. It carries a weighting of 30% in the flagship QS World University Rankings.
It forms part of the Research and Discovery lens.
Relevant Rankings
Academic Reputation is an Indicator used in the following rankings:
- QS World University Rankings
- QS Subject Rankings
- QS Sustainability Rankings
- QS Arab Region Rankings
- QS Asia Region Rankings
- QS Europe Region Rankings
- QS Latin America and Caribbean Region Rankings
- QS International Trade Ranking
- QS Global MBA Rankings
- QS Business Masters Rankings
- QS Online MBA Rankings
- QS Executive MBA Rankings
It forms part of the Research and Discovery lens.
Methodology
Below you can find the weightings for the indicator. Weightings are reviewed on an annual basis.
Ranking Project | Weighting | Domestic Nominations | International Nominations |
QS World University Rankings | 30% | 15% | 85% |
QS Subject Rankings |
60% Arts & Humanities 40% Engineering & Technology 40% Life Sciences & Medicine 40% Natural Sciences 50% Social Sciences & Management |
33% | 67% |
QS Sustainability Rankings |
1% Impact of Education 10% Earth & Environment |
||
QS Arab Region Rankings | 30% | 15% | 85% |
QS Asia Region Rankings | 30% | 15% | 85% |
QS Europe Region Rankings | 30% | 15% | 85% |
QS Latin America and Caribbean Region Rankings | 30% | 15% | 85% |
QS International Trade Ranking |
5% MBA and Master's 10% EMBA |
||
QS Global MBA Rankings | 10% | 30% | 70% |
QS Business Masters Rankings | 15% | 60% | 40% |
QS Online MBA Rankings | 15% | 50% | 50% |
QS Executive MBA Rankings | 25% | 50% | 50% |
QS World University Rankings and QS University Rankings by Region
In our World University Rankings and University Rankings by Region the following rules are applied:
- The scores across the five faculty areas are combined with an equal weighting.
- The assumption is that, in a typical international comprehensive university, each of these faculty areas represents a roughly equitable share of activity.
QS Subject Rankings
In our Subject Rankings, to stop institutions with a strong overall reputation getting an unfair advantage and to highlight specialist institutions, the following rules are applied:
- Academic reputation in the specific subject is compared to academic reputation in the relevant faculty area (Subject Rankings).
- Academic reputation in the specific faculty is compared to overall academic reputation (Faculty Rankings).
- An extra boost may be applied to institutions identified as Specialists if they offer academic programs in the relevant subject or faculty area.
- Responses from academics expressing knowledge of a single specific discipline are weighted higher.
- Weightings are applied based on the location with which respondents consider themselves familiar.
QS Business School Rankings
In our Business School Rankings, the following rules are applied:
- Analysis is not split by faculty area.
- Regional weighting is not applied.
- Standalone business schools that receive nominations are boosted to combat the advantage that affiliate/child schools have due to the halo effect that may exist from the parent institution.
- If a business school or its parent institution is nominated in the main section of the survey in one of the below business-related subject areas, it receives a boost to reflect its broader brand awareness.
- Global MBA Rankings - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Marketing
- Master's in Management - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Economics and Econometrics, Marketing
- Master's in Finance - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Economics and Econometrics
- Master's in Business Analytics - Business and Management Studies, Computer Science, Economics and Econometrics, Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research
- Master's in Marketing - Business and Management Studies, Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Marketing, Statistics and Operational Research
- Master's in Supply Chain Management - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Economics and Econometrics, Statistics and Operational Research
- Online MBA Rankings (OMBA) - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Marketing
- Executive MBA Rankings (EMBA) - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Marketing
QS International Trade Ranking
In our International Trade Rankings we use nominations from the following subject areas:
- Business and Management
- Business and Management
- Economics
Data Source
This indicator is based on the responses to the Academic Survey, which is distributed worldwide to academics from a number of different sources, including:
- Previous Respondents
- Submitted contact lists from institutions
- Sign-ups on our sign-up facility
- IBIS database
Calculations
Once the responses to the Academic Survey have been processed, we apply the following for all of the nominations for each of our five broad faculty areas (World University Rankings, University Rankings by Region or Faculty Rankings) or for each of our individual narrow subject areas (Subject Rankings).
International Weighted Count
- A weighted count of international nominations for each institution based on regional and country-level knowledge of a respondent, as well as a year of response.
Regional Familiarity and Faculty Knowledge Weights
- Weightings are applied based on the regional and faculty familiarity of respondents. Respondents are able to relate to more than one region.
- If a respondent recommends an institution out of their regional or faculty familiarity the nomination has a lower weighting.
- The aim is to ensure that over-represented areas are not obscuring nominations from less represented areas.
Country Weights *
* not applicable for QS World University Rankings and QS University Rankings by Region
- Weightings are applied based on the location with which respondents consider themselves familiar.
- The number of institutions in a country with international nominations is compared to the number of nominators from that country. Locations with a low participation rate are exempted from this to avoid small number effects.
Year Weights
- We use a combined total of the last FIVE years of survey nominations.
- The oldest nominations (5th year) are weighted at 25%, the 4th year is weighted at 50% and the most recent three years at full 100% weight.
Domestic Weighted Count
- Derive a weighted count of domestic nominations for each institution (excluding self-nominations).
- This is adjusted against the number of institutions from that country with a certain level of international nominations and the total volume of responses from that country.
- This is to reflect the fact that institutions in larger countries with more recognized institutions face more competition for nominations.
Normalizing and Transformation
- We normalize both domestic and international count to achieve a score out of 100.
- The two scores are combined with the relevant weights (see Methodology)
- Transformation techniques are applied to minimize the impact of outliers and scale the numbers to present a score out of 100 for the given faculty area.