British agency ranks six Pakistani universities among world’s top 800

Six Pakistani universities have been included in the list of world’s top 800 universities compiled by the British ranking agency, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).

The Pakistani universities that made the top 800 list of the QS include Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU), National University of Sciences And Technology (NUST) Islamabad, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), University of Karachi (KU), University of Lahore and University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Lahore.

NUST ranked in the 501-550 range, QAU ranked second among Pakistani universities, but was ranked in the 651-700 range while LUMS, UET, KU and University of Lahore all ranked below 700.

National University of Sciences And Technology has also been ranked separately in ‘Engineering and Technology category at 340.

The QS rankings takes into account academic reputation (40 per cent), employer reputation (10pc), student to faculty ratio (20pc), citations per faculty (20pc), international faculty ratio (5pc) and international students (5pc). The methodology aims to assess research, teaching, employability and internationalisation.

On the other hand, 15 Indian universities made it to the list. Two of them, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD) were ranked within 200, at 147 and 179 respectively.

The top 10 universities in the world according to the QS rankings are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge University, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, University of Oxford, University College London, Imperial College, ETH Zurich and the University of Chicago.

Quaid-e-Azam University has been ranked Pakistan’s best university in the general category, according to rankings for 2015 released by the Higher Education Commission (HEC).

University of Punjab in Lahore and National University of Science and Technology (NUST) secured second and third positions respectively. HEC Chairperson Dr Mukhtar Ahmed said the rankings had been conducted for 129 universities in the country.