Rice ranks No. 72 among world universities

Rice University moved up to No. 72 in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) — a gain of 12 positions from No. 84 in 2015.

ShanghaiRanking Consultancy ranked more than 1,200 universities around the world and published the top 500 online. Harvard University is No. 1.

Rice is tied with Nagoya University in Japan and University of Groningen in Netherlands for No. 72.

Criteria for the ARWU include several indicators of academic or research performance, such as alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in the journals Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution.

Of 50 U.S. schools that made the top 100, four are in Texas: The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (No. 43), The University of Texas at Austin (No. 44), Rice and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (No. 96).

The rankings are posted here.