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Sydney 38th in world in QS rankings

9 June 2021
From 40th to 38th in world rankings
Strong results for University of Sydney in highly regarded QS rankings of 1300 universities.

The University of Sydney continues to excel in the QS World University Rankings, this year moving from 40th in the world to 38th.

The University maintains its outstanding record of being ranked in the top 50 universities globally every year since the QS rankings were established in 2004. The result places the University among the top three percent of institutions in the world. This year it ranked third in Australia.

“The University’s continuing strong performance in the QS rankings is a credit to our institution,” said Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Stephen Garton.

“A critical factor in these prestigious rankings is the quality of our research across all disciplines, confirmed here by our academic peers and the broader community. The Australian and international community are the ultimate beneficiaries of this important work.”

A critical factor in these prestigious rankings is the quality of our research across all disciplines, confirmed here by our academic peers and the broader community.
Professor Stephen Garton, Vice-Chancellor and Principal

The University of Sydney now achieves one of the world’s top 30 Employer Reputation scores and has enjoyed a fifteen-place jump in the research impact indicator.

Most recently our researchers have uncovered some of the ways COVID-19 affects the heart and identified potential drug treatments, collaborated on research identifying the immune response associated with protection from COVID-19 and are working on needle-free vaccine delivery for at-risk groups.

The University of Sydney has also produced research modelling the likely impact of coronavirus lockdown measures on mental health, a multidisciplinary team is leading a collaboration to produce a simple, low-cost ventilator to assist the COVID-19 effort and we are at the forefront of the race to understand the genetics of what causes the disease in humans.

“Multidisciplinary research is the bedrock of addressing society’s most urgent issues, the fight against the coronavirus being only one of those. The QS rankings recognise, on an annual basis, our long-term engagement in undertaking that challenge,” said Professor Duncan Ivison, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research).

The rankings, produced by global higher education consultancy QS Quacquarelli Symonds, list the world’s top 1300 universities in 97 locations. The results account for the distribution and performance of 14.7 million academic papers and the 96 million citations received by those papers; they also account for the expert opinions of over 130,000 academic faculty and 75,000 employers.

Today’s rankings are the eighteenth edition of the QS World University Rankings. Earlier this year the QS 2021 Subject Rankings rated 30 University of Sydney subjects in the top 50 globally. In the 2020 QS Graduate Employability Rankings published last year, the University of Sydney was named the leading university in Australia, and fourth globally, for graduate employability.

The University was recently ranked first in Australia and second in the world in Times Higher Education Impact rankings, for a second year. The rankings measure an institution's research, outreach and stewardship against UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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