Cambridge puts in consistent showing in QS World Rankings

The University achieved the greatest single number of top-ten rankings but fell behind Harvard, MIT and Oxford in many subjects

Cambridge is the second-best place in the world to study Arts and Humanities subjectsSimon Lock

by Danny Wittenberg

This article is 9 years old

Wednesday March 8 2017, 2:26pm

The University of Cambridge has attained the most consistent performance in the QS World University Rankings, figuring amongst the top ten for more individual subjects than any other institution in the latest QS rankings.

The QS rankings create an annual evaluation of the best universities in the world for four subject areas for individual subjects.

Cambridge appears at second place in the global standings for Arts and Humanities, as well as Life sciences and Medicine and Natural Sciences, for which it is the highest-ranked British university.

The University is third best in Engineering and Technology, behind Stanford University and the top-ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which took the most top places across the 46 separate courses compared, together with Harvard University.

It is fourth-best for Social Sciences and Management, a category which encompasses a variety of social sciences including Economics, Law, Politics and International Studies, and Sociology.

The QS annual rankings by subject aim to show the strengths of institutions according to their specialist fields, rather than basing the assessment on an overall university ranking. As such, Cambridge has not been given an overarching rank, though in September QS named it the fourth-best university in the world.

Cambridge is listed as one of the top five locations in the world to study 15 different degrees, placing second for Archeology, English Language and Literature, Geography and Modern Languages, and third for History, Law, Maths, Medicine and Psychology.

Its status has shown a decline, however, in Archaeology, History and Maths, where Cambridge was ranked highest in 2016.

Meanwhile, Oxford was named the best university in the world for Archaeology, Anatomy and Physiology, English and Geography, on top of featuring amongst the top five for a further 18 subjects.

The subject indices are compiled using QS’s global surveys of academics and employers, in addition to measuring the research productivity, impact and citations per paper of respective faculties

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