Imperial College sixth best university in the world

Imperial College has been ranked 6th best university in the world by the QS World University Rankings for 2023.

This places the College at third place in the UK, behind Cambridge in second place and Oxford in fourth. The College sits in joint sixth with the California Institute of Technology.

The news follows a number of prestigious accolades earned by the College over the past year. Last autumn the College won the Sunday Times University of the Year award, following its outstanding National Student Survey results and world-leading transition to a hybrid teaching model. More recently, the College excelled in the six-yearly Research Excellence Framework, which found that the College produces a greater proportion of “world-leading” research than any other UK university. The computing department performed exceptionally well overall, with 93% of research being classes as world-leading and the remaining 7% being classed as “internationally excellent”. Furthermore, the College was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize, bestowed earlier this year, in recognition fo the College’s contributions to the national response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The College was additionally awarded a certificate to recognise its “internationalisation”.

President Alice Gast said on the award “These results reaffirm that Imperial is one of the best universities in the world. Our success is rooted in our global outlook, our diverse community and the spirit of collaboration that runs through everything we do.

“The impact we have on society will always be more important than where we fall on a league table. We excel at teaching and research essential to addressing the global challenges of today and tomorrow. Our successes over the past year - including our outstanding REF results, our University of the Year Award and our Queen’s Anniversary Prize - are a testament to our commitment to excellence.”

The College has steadily risen through the QS World University rankings, from 9th in 2020, 8th in 2021 and 7th in 2022.

The Times Higher Education ranks the College 12th globally, the worst ranking in this league table for the last 12 years. The College places 4th nationally in the Times’ university rankings and 7th in The Guardian’s national rankings. Within the Times’ ranking, whilst research quality and graduate prospects both rank second in the UK, teaching quality is ranked 28th.