October 25, 2016
Four Philadelphia schools made the cut in a recent list of the world's best universities.
The U.S. News & World Report released Tuesday its third annual list of the "Best Global Universities Rankings." This year's list determined the top 1,000 institutions across 65 countries.
The University of Pennsylvania, which is usually included near the top of lists of best schools, was the highest ranked local college. The publication put the Ivy League school in a tie for 17th with the University of Michigan.
Thomas Jefferson University, Temple University and Drexel University all cracked the top 500.
To calculate the rankings, researchers considered 12 indicators to measure a school's performance. Reputation for global research and regional research, as well as the number of publications and citations weighed heavily in the rankings.
For example, Jefferson was ranked tied for 399th. However, its place on the list was boosted by the number of citations, which indicated the impact of the health services school's research.
Temple and Drexel, which finished in ties at 403rd and 405th, respectively, earned high marks for providing research data in social sciences, arts and humanities.
Over a fifth of the list, including the top five spots, was comprised of U.S. universities.
"U.S. universities do especially well in the Best Global Universities rankings because they place an enormous emphasis on academic research – a key factor in our methodology since these are indicators that can be compared globally," said Robert Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News.
Another four Pennsylvania schools outside of Philly also made the list, including University of Pittsburgh (47th), Penn State University (56th), Carnegie Mellon University (67th) and Lehigh University (619th).
For the complete rankings, click here.
