Carolina ranks 30th in ranking of world universities

Students line up to sip from the Old Well on the first day of classes.

Photo by Donn Young

UNC-Chapel Hill ranks 30th in the world and 22nd in the U.S. among global universities, according to the 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) released by the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, in conjunction with the Center for World Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. This places UNC-Chapel Hill as 9th among U.S. public universities in the global ranking. UNC-Chapel Hill is tied in its rankings with Rockefeller University.

UNC was ranked 36th in 2017 and 35th in 2016. This year, Harvard University placed first, followed by Stanford University and the University of Cambridge, respectively.

Since 2003, ARWU has ranked more than 1,200 universities and now publishes the best 1,000 universities annually. Indicators used to rank universities include the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices and the per capita academic performance of an institution.

For a full list of rankings, visit http://www.shanghairanking.com.

Published in the Fall 2018 issue | The Scoop