For the fifth year in a row Amsterdam’s UvA has been ranked top Dutch university by the QS World University Rankings. The rankings, conducted by British publisher Quacquarelli Symonds, assess universities around the world based on academic reputation, graduates’ reputation for employability, staff-to-student ratios, citations per faculty and the ratio of international teachers and students.

UvA performing well

The University of Amsterdam comes in at 50th place, moving up eight spots compared to last year’s QS Rankings. Delft University also performed well, improving its rating from 95 to 86, and University of Groningen moved up seven places to 90.

The three other Dutch universities listed in the top global 100 mostly maintained their places: Leiden University dropped one spot to 75, Utrecht University moved up one place to 80 and Erasmus University Rotterdam moved up two spots to share equal 90th place with Groningen.

QS Top 10 Dutch Universities for 2014

UvA's high performing faculties

Three of the UvA’s disciplines also make the international top 50 for specific academic fields. The UvA’s faculties are ranked 37th for Life Sciences and Medicine, 42nd for Social Sciences and Management, and hold 46th place for Arts and Humanities.

Different rankings, different results

Interestingly, Dutch universities rank higher in the QS rankings than in this year’s Shanghai Ranking, with 11 of its 13 universities in the QS top 200 list, compared with only eight in the Shanghai top 200.

The order of the best Dutch universities also varies between raking studies, with the Shanghai ranking rating Utrecht University as the Netherlands’ finest, and placing UvA as sixth within the country.

International leaders

American and British institutions continue to occupy the top spots in the annual QS ranking, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, US) coming in at number one, followed by the University of Cambridge (UK) and Imperial College London (UK), both equal second.

Sources: UvA, QS