Does anyone know how uni rankings work? (1 Viewer)

[HazzRat]

According to the QS world uni rankings, usyd and unsw are ranked 19th. The lowest atar I found to get into unsw is the Bachelor or Arts with a mark of 66.15. So in other words, you don’t have to be a genius to get accepted into it.

However, lower down the rankings are the University of Chicago (21st), Princeton (22nd), and Yale (23rd), etc with acceptance rates of 5%, 5.7%, and 4.6% respectively. So in other words, you do have to be a genius to get into these unis.

So why exactly are the Australian unis ranked so high? I mean I’m not complaining. By virtue of being Aussie, with a decent atar I can go to a top 20 world uni. However it just seems weird they’re ranked so high when they’re not that hard to get accepted into (relative to all the other unis on the list).

 

[its_ace21]

ranked high for sustainability

arent uni's just ranked with a bunch of different stuff and then listed from high to low with the average/overall of those rankings

 

[arcadian]

QS rankings were updated like literally a few days ago - unsw is 19th and usyd is 18th, unimelb is 13th

QS started incorporating sustainability into their metrics in 2023, pushing down historically "well-regarded" unis particularly those in usa

If I remember correctly the only reason unsw is the lowest for aus unis in top 20 is because it was comparatively lower than usyd and unimelb in one specific area that i do not remember off the top of my head, other than that for all other areas unsw was second or first

 

[carrotsss]

all of their methodology and individual scores are listed on the qs website if u want to dig into things further, but the main reasons for aus unis good rankings in qs are:
- international students, staff and research
- sustainability: this is composed of not just environmental stuff but also some social impact stuff like accessibility for disadvantaged people etc
- academic reputation, employer reputation and employment outcomes

basically we do really well on everything other than the main teaching-related metric, faculty student ratio lol

but university rankings aren’t really something you should take super seriously (especially the intricacies of close rankings) since the weightings are pretty whack, methodologies are a bit weird and precise rankings are a bit of a flawed idea generally

the main actual use of uni rankings imo is as a general proxy of how prestigious a uni is which will be useful when you’re applying for jobs or going into postgrad especially overseas

 

[Unovan]

They really don't matter too much its mainly advertising for international students from what I understnad

 

[scaryshark09]

the first one is usyd and the second one is unsw. for both unis, whats going on with the faculty to student ratio??? without it, the rankings would be top 5 probs. theres only 0.2 difference between the two unis which is very small compared to some of the other gaps between other rankings, so im kinda salty cause im unsw student. i will clarify im not a unsw student by choice, they just dont offer my course at usyd.

 

[qweeosh]

sometimes you can't trust University rankings because some unis are ranked based on research/ research amount, due to the nature of how some research are composed some unis are ranked higher than they should e.g. some Chinese unis are ranked higher than Australian unis when they really shouldn't due to their nature so ranking unis are more or less useless

 

[liamkk112]

According to the QS world uni rankings, usyd and unsw are ranked 19th. The lowest atar I found to get into unsw is the Bachelor or Arts with a mark of 66.15. So in other words, you don’t have to be a genius to get accepted into it.

However, lower down the rankings are the University of Chicago (21st), Princeton (22nd), and Yale (23rd), etc with acceptance rates of 5%, 5.7%, and 4.6% respectively. So in other words, you do have to be a genius to get into these unis.

So why exactly are the Australian unis ranked so high? I mean I’m not complaining. By virtue of being Aussie, with a decent atar I can go to a top 20 world uni. However it just seems weird they’re ranked so high when they’re not that hard to get accepted into (relative to all the other unis on the list).

rankings like qs are inherently “biased” especially in the ratings on stuff like employer rep. they’re still an okay way to discern between different unis but don’t let them discourage you from going to a certain uni (and to be honest unless if you’re choosing a top 500 uni over a top 100 one your experience is gonna be fairly similar in australia).

if you want a very objective ranking that is purely based on academic publications, try the leaden ranking, although this only accounts for research and nothing else so isn’t too relevant for undergrad. the australian government also publishes their own rating for research in the arc era, and they have something called compare ed which is based on student surveys (although some of the survey percentages are wacky) and gives you the average salary for grads in different fields.