Skip to main content

Eleven subjects are ranked in the world’s top 100 – with five in the top 50 and one rising into the top 10 

Exeter subjects ranked amongst the world’s best, according to influential league table

Subjects across the Arts and Sciences at the University of Exeter have been recognised as being amongst the very best worldwide, in the latest influential global league table.

Eleven subjects are ranked in the world’s top 100 – with five in the top 50 and one rising into the top 10 - according to the latest QS World University Subject Rankings, published on Wednesday, March 4, 2020.

Sport and Health Sciences - under the category "sports-related subjects"– has risen two places to 10th, the highest ranking subject internationally.  Engineering – Minerals and Mining is also ranked 1st in the UK and 14th worldwide.

Geography (21st), Environmental Sciences (38th) and History (50th) all also feature in the elite top 50 global grouping.

Six other subjects - Archaeology, English, Theology, Psychology, Politics, and Earth / Marine Sciences - all feature within the global Top 100.

As well as Engineering - Minerals and Mining, five other subjects feature among the top 10 nationally; Sport and Health Sciences is ranked 3rd, Agriculture and Forestry 5th, Environmental Sciences 6th, Geography 7th and Theology 10th.

Exeter also has at least one top 100 subject in each of the ‘Subject Areas’ that map onto  the majority of its Colleges  - Life and Environmental Sciences; Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences; Humanities; and Social Sciences and International Studies.

To compile the rankings, QS analysed more than 22 million papers, producing almost 200 million citations. In total, 1,222 institutions were ranked across the 48 subjects and five subject areas.

Four measures are used to rank the subjects – academic reputation, employer reputation, citation counts per output and the ‘H-index’ – of the entire set of outputs included in the subject / faculty ranking for each institution.

Professor Neil Gow, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Impact) said: “Within our ecosystem in which research and education thrive together it is great to see that the institution's strong global impact and highly cited research is recognised in the latest QS rankings.”

Professor Tim Quine, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education), said: “We are delighted that such a broad range of subjects, across both the sciences and humanities, have performed so well in these latest rankings, both nationally and internationally.

“These results reflect the exceptional learning and teaching innovations, commitment of our educators and passion of our students in departments and across the University as a whole.”

The 2020 edition of the QS World University Rankings by Subject, released by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds, names the world’s best universities for the study of 48 academic disciplines.

The rankings, compiled by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds, provide authoritative comparative analysis on the performance of 13,138 individual university programs, taken by students at 1,368 universities which can be found in 83 locations across the world, across 48 academic disciplines and five broad Faculty Areas.

Date: 4 March 2020