Tsinghua University Ranked World’s Number One for Engineering, Overtakes MIT

Margaux Schreurs | Oct 8, 2015 3:00 pm | Add a comment | 4622 reads

Another day, another accolade for our fair city: Beijing's own Tsinghua Unversity has snagged a #1 slot in the 2016 Best Global Universities Rankings by US News and World Report, the first time in our recollection that a Chinese institution has been on the top rung.

According to the newly published report, Tsinghua has overtaken the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the top school for Engineering.

The ranking is based on research citations and publications, as well as reputation among leading researchers in the field. That does seem quite heavy on the publishing side, but hey, a top ranking is a top ranking. Here are the eight factors used in their rankings (and the weights of each):

Publications 17.5%
Number of publications that are among the 10 percent most cited 17.5%
Global research reputation 12.5%
Regional research reputation 12.5%
Total citations 12.5%
Percentage of total publications that are among the 10 percent most cited 10%
International collaboration 10%
Normalized citation impact 7.5%

Student experience or satisfaction is not taken into consideration; you can see the detailed methodology here.

Tsinghua also cracked the Top 10 in the subject rankings for Computer Science (#5), Chemistry (#9), and Materials Science (#9).

Want to join the over 3,000 international students currently studying at Tsinghua? Visit their English admissions page here.

With MIT taking the second spot, another US university, the University of California - Berkeley, takes third, and another Chinese university, Zhejiang University based in Hangzhou, takes fourth place. You can see the entire rankings for Engineering here.

In terms of overall global rank, Tsinghua takes the 59th spot. Another Beijing institution, Peking University, ranked 41th place overall.

Here are the global rankings of the 12 schools in Beijing that appear in the rankings (750 global universities are ranked):

#41 Peking University
#59 Tsinghua University
#296 Beijing Normal University
#381 China Agricultural University
#477 Beijing Institute of Technology
#507 Beihang University
#576 Union School of Public Health - Peking Union Medical College
#667 University of Science and Technology Beijing
#670 Capital Medical University
#672 Beijing Jiaotong University
#685 Beijing University of Chemical Technology
#712 Beijing Forestry University

As for Shanghai (suck it, Shanghai) they only have eight in the top 750, and their top-ranked school is Fudan, at a paltry #96.

Here's a handy graphic from China Daily:

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