The QS World University Rankings 2022 have just been released, and 11 German universities have made it to the top 200. The federal republic is the third-best represented country in the prestigious ranking. 

The best universities in the world

Published earlier this month, the QS World University Rankings 2022 is the 10th annual edition and features 1.300 institutions from around the world. Each university is assessed according to six key metrics: 

• Academic reputation
• Faculty to student ratio
• Citations per faculty
• Employer reputation
• International faculty ratio
• International student ratio

For the 10th year in a row, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) claimed the top spot, achieving a score of 100 out of 100. The ranking’s upper echelons are dominated by American and British institutions, with nine of the top 10 spots going to universities based in these two countries. University of Oxford and Stanford University claimed positions two and three. 

How did QS rank German universities?

The QS ranking has always judged Germany’s universities slightly more harshly than the THE World University Rankings, which recently put 21 German institutions among the top 200 in the world. However, they are in agreement about which are the top three universities in Germany, albeit putting them in a slightly different order. 

This year, QS has once again selected Technical University of Munich as its top-ranked university in Germany. The highly-regarded institute once again claimed the 50th spot. The other two universities in the top 100, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München, have switched positions to claim ranks 63 and 64, respectively. When it comes to academic excellence, Munich is clearly the place to study in Germany. 

Overall, of the 46 German universities included in the ranking, 11 made it into the top 200 (down slightly from 12 last year, after University of Göttingen slipped to 204th place). They were ranked accordingly: 

• =50. - Technical University of Munich (75,6)
• 63. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (70,8)
• 64. Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München (70,1)
• 127. Freie Universität Berlin (54,9)
• =128. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (54,8)
• 136. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (53,4)
• 159. Technische Universität Berlin (49,3)
• 165. RWTH Aachen University (48)
• 172. Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (47)
• =177. Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (46,4)
• =194. Technische Universität Dresden (44,8)

For the full ranking, visit the QS World University Ranking website.