TEHRAN – Sharif University of Technology, one of the largest engineering schools in Iran, was listed among the top 500 universities in the world, according to the 2021 ranking of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University.

QS is the world’s leading provider of services, analytics, and insight to the global higher education sector, whose mission is to enable motivated people anywhere in the world to fulfill their potential through educational achievement, international mobility, and career development.

The QS World University Rankings portfolio, inaugurated in 2004, has grown to become the world’s most popular source of comparative data about university performance.

Some 1,000 of the world’s top universities are ranked using six different indicators to compile QS World University Rankings 2021. Universities are evaluated according to the following six metrics: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio, and international student ratio.

As per the data published on QS World University Rankings official website, Sharif University of Technology ranked 409 and University of Tehran ranked between 591 and 600.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) tops the list for a record ninth consecutive year in QS ranking. MIT is one of five American institutions in this year’s top 10. Stanford University, Harvard University, California Institute of Technology, University of Oxford, Swiss Federal University of Technology, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, University of Chicago, and University College London (UCL) are among the world's top 10 universities.

Iranian universities on world ranking lists

Most recently, the Islamic World Science Citation Database (ISC) published the results of the ISC World University Rankings 2019, according to which 35 Iranian universities were listed among the world’s top 2,000 in various subjects.

Also, forty-three Iranian universities were placed in the Islamic World University Rankings 2019 announced by the ISC.

With a scientific growth rate of 10.4 percent in 2019, Iran ranked second among the top 25 countries in the world, next to China with a growth rate of 12.9 percent, according to the Web of Science website.

In 2000, Iran's share of scientific productivity was about 0.1 percent, which reached about 2 percent with a 20-fold increase in both Scopus and WoS citation databases.

According to statistics released by the International Web of Science Database, Iran's citation rank has always been on the rise over the last eight years, from 24 in 2012 to 16 in 2019.

Iran ranks first in terms of the number of universities in the region and among Islamic countries, according to Shanghai Ranking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2020.

Two Iranian universities have been ranked among the top 100 universities in Asia, according to Webometrics Ranking of World Universities for July 2020.

Moreover, 7 Iranian universities have been listed among the best 1000 worldwide; including, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Sharif University of Technology, Tarbiat Modares University, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran University of Science and Technology, came in 539th, 656th, 826th, 908th, 915th, 916th places, respectively, according to Webometrics Ranking of World Universities.

In June, THE Asia University Rankings 2020 ranked five Iranian universities among the top 100 universities worldwide.

The Center for Science and Technology Studies Leiden Ranking has placed 36 Iranian universities in the list of over 1,000 major universities worldwide in 2020 compared with 26 universities in 2019.

Also, five Iranian universities have been placed among the world’s top 1,000 universities announced by the prestigious Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2021.

FB/MG