Rice moves up to No. 82 among world’s top universities in new ranking

Rice University ranks No. 82 — up 10 places from last year — among the top 500 universities in the world, according to the 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

In ARWU’s comparison of world universities by subject and broad subject fields, Rice is ranked No. 18 in chemistry (up from 27 last year) and No. 42 (up from 50 last year) for the field of natural sciences/mathematics. Rice also had a significant gain in the field of engineering/technology/computer sciences, which is tied for Nos. 51-75 (up from Nos. 76-100 last year).

In Rice’s other individual subject rankings, both mathematics and computer science are tied for Nos. 51-75; economics/business is tied for Nos. 75-100; and physics is tied for Nos. 101-150. In the field of social sciences, Rice is tied for Nos. 101-150.

The rankings are based on a combination of research and academic performance, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of highly cited researchers, the number of papers published in the journals Nature and Science, the number of papers in major citation indices and the university’s per-capita academic performance.

Fifty-two of the schools ranked in the top 100 are universities in the United States, including No. 1-ranked Harvard. Rice is one of only three other universities in Texas that made the top 100, along with the University of Texas at Austin (No. 39), the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (No. 45) and Texas A&M University (No. 96).

More than 1,200 universities are ranked by ARWU every year, and the best 500 are published online.

For more information on the rankings, visit http://www.ShanghaiRanking.com/.