QS has published its eleventh World University Rankings by Subject. These rankings cover a total of 51 disciplines, grouped into five broad subject areas.
Arts & Humanities
For Arts & Humanities, the University of Oxford takes the lead with an overall score of 98.6. Harvard University is second with an overall score of 98.5. The University of Cambridge comes in third place with an overall score of 97.3.
Two universities from the UAE are included in this subject ranking, American University of Sharjah and United Arab Emirates University. There are also two universities from Saudi Arabia in this list, including King Abdulaziz University and King Saud University.
Engineering & Technology
For Engineering & Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) places first with an overall score of 97.3. Stanford University comes second with 96, and the University of Cambridge places third with 93.4.
King Abdulaziz University from Saudi Arabia ranks 72nd in this subject area. Meanwhile, three institutions from the UAE are included in this ranking: Khalifa University of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates University, and the American University of Sharjah.
Life Sciences & Medicine
For Life Sciences & Medicine, Harvard University takes the lead with an overall score of 98.6. The University of Oxford comes in second with a score of 94.7. Stanford places third with a 94.4 score.
Cairo University from Egypt places 106th, and King Abdulaziz University from Saudi Arabia places 116th.
Natural Sciences
For Natural Sciences, MIT again takes the lead with an overall score of 97.5. Stanford places second with a score of 97.3, and Harvard takes third place with 97.
Meanwhile, four universities from Saudi Arabia are included in this subject ranking. King Abdulaziz University places 137th, King Abdullah University of Science & Technology takes the 196th spot. King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals and King Saud University are tied in 362nd place.
Social Sciences & Management
For Social Sciences & Management, Harvard takes the lead with an overall score of 97.8. The London School of Economics and Political Science grabs the second spot with an overall score of 94.5, while Stanford is in third with an overall score of 93.7.
Looking at the five subject areas’ overall tables, the University of Oxford, Stanford University, Harvard University, and Cambridge are the institutions that are usually included in the top five.
QS Ranking Methodology
Higher Education institutions are evaluated using four components in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2021. These components are academic reputation, employer reputation, research citations per paper, and H-index.
The academic reputation factor relies on responses from over 100,000 academics worldwide. The results are filtered according to the narrow area of expertise identified by respondents.
Employer reputation incorporates employability as a key factor in the evaluation of international universities. The result is derived from nearly 50,000 survey responses from graduate employers worldwide.
The research citations per paper are obtained from a minimum publication threshold for each subject. All citations data is sourced from Scopus, spanning five years.
The H-index measures both the productivity and impact of a scientist or scholar’s published work. The index is based on the academic’s most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications.
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