What makes a global top 10 university?

It's the third year in a row that the US university, famous for its science and technology research, has been top of the QS World University Rankings. Another science-based university, Imperial College London, is in joint second place along with Cambridge University, BBC News reports. Behind these in fourth place is Harvard University, the world's wealthiest university. And two more UK universities share joint fifth place, University College London and Oxford. With King's College London in 16th place, it means that London has three institutions in the top 20. Even though some university leaders might be sceptical about such rankings, they will all be sharply aware of their significance. Mike Nicholson, Oxford University's head of admissions, says: "It's fair to say that it would be a foolish university that did not pay close attention to how league tables are constructed." Rankings have become an inescapable part of the reputation and brand image of universities, helping them to attract students, staff and research investment. No university website is complete without the claim to be in the top 100 for something or other. How to be top But what is perhaps more surprising is that they are a relatively recent arrival on the higher education landscape. This is only the tenth year of the QS rankings and the earliest global league table, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was first published in 2003. They have risen alongside the globalisation of higher education and the sharing of information online. But how does a university get to the top of the rankings? And why does such a small group of institutions seem to have an iron grip on the top places? The biggest single factor in the QS rankings is academic reputation. This is calculated by surveying more than 60,000 academics around the world about their opinion on the merits of institutions other than their own. Ben Sowter, managing director of the QS, says this means that universities with an established name and a strong brand are likely to do better. The next biggest factor - "citations per faculty" - looks at the strength of research in universities, calculated in terms of the number of times research work is cited by other researchers. The ratio of academic staff to students represents another big chunk of how the rankings are decided.