MGIMO Among Best Russian Universities in QS World Ranking

22 July 2019

June 19th, the leading international ranking agency Quacquarelli Symonds (UK) published its 16th ranking of the leading universities in the world: QS World University Ranking. MGIMO came 366th in the final table.

The QS World University Ranking was first published in 2004 and has since then become widely known in the academic, professional, and student communities as one of the three main international rankings of universities worldwide (together with the Shanghai and the Times Higher Education ratings).

This year, universities from over 80 countries participated in the ranking. The countries with the most universities presented, for several years already, are the United States (157 universities), followed by the United Kingdom (84), Germany (46), Japan (41) and France (31).

The number of Russian universities making it into the top 400 increased from 8 to 13, while the total number of Russian universities ranked dropped from 27 to 25 last year. The most remarkable changes in the 2019 ranking are the noticeable growth of Novosibirsk State University, which for the first time ousted Saint Petersburg State University from the second place, as well as the breakthrough made by Ural Federal University into the top-400, rising by 48 places at once and for the first time making it into this category.

MGIMO has been in the top 400 universities of the world since 2011 according to QS. Over these years, MGIMO managed to improve on its consolidated rating position by 20 points, moving up from 386^th to 366^th place. MGIMO has taken huge steps forwards in terms of internationalization (proportion of foreign faculty members and students), in the ratio of students per faculty, and regarding its publication activities. This positive trend has been achieved against the backdrop of a highly-intensive competition with classical, research, humanities and technical universities in the national and international arenas. MGIMO is the only humanities university in the top 10 Russian universities and one of two institutions not benefiting from dedicated state programs aimed at reinforcing the global competitiveness of Russian universities.

MGIMO’s partners, with which it carries out joint MA programs, also have outstanding results in the ranking. The University of St. Andrews (UK, 100^th place) made it into the top 100. The University of Geneva (Switzerland, 110^th place), the Free University of Berlin (Germany, 130^th place), the University of Barcelona (Spain, 165^th place), the University of Bologna (Italy, 177^th place) were represented in the top 200 universities globally. La Sapienza University (Italy, 203^rd place), the University of Reading (United Kingdom, 205^th place) and the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (Kazakhstan, 207^th place), the University of Campinas (Brazil, 214^th place) and Sciences Po Paris (France, 242^nd place) were in the 200-300 bracket. Some of MGIMO’s partner universities did not take part in this ranking but have excellent results in subject rankings and in the new QS Business Masters Rankings: HEC Paris took the first place for its Strategic Management program and second place for its program in International Finance, Bocconi University’s MA in Finance came 11^th and its program in International Management came 11^th.

Universities are assessed in this ranking according to six criteria: Academic Reputation (40%), Employer Reputation (10%), Citations per Faculty (20%), Student to Faculty ratio (20%), International Faculty ratio and International Student ratio (5% each).

— See the MGIMO web-site for russian version