Five Malaysian Universities among the World's Top 300

British higher education and career information and solutions website Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has just released their World University Rankings for 2018 today. Out of the 300 universities, five local varsities have made it on the list. 

University of Malaya (UM) is still the country's leading university, placing 114th -- its highest position ever achieved in the QS World Rankings. UM was up 19 spots from last its position last year. 

Other universities are Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), is now in the 230th position (it was 302nd last year) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), jumps to 264th from 330th. 

Meanwhile, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) leaps from 270th to 229th and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) rises from 288th to 253rd.

All in all, there are nine Malaysian varsities in this year's list. While five have improved their positions, three remained unchanged, and one dropped from its rating in the previous year. 

"Seven Malaysian universities improve their score for QS’s Academic Reputation metric, while eight improve their score for QS’s Employer Reputation metric," said QS research director Ben Sowter. 

He added that these results show that Malaysian universities, in general, are improving their global academic community and world's employers reputation. 

The overall ranking showed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the top school for the sixth consecutive year followed by Stanford University, Harvard University, California Institute of Technology and University of Cambridge.

The results of the QS World University Rankings 2018 were evaluated through the following metrics: Academic Reputation, Employer Reputation, Faculty/Student Ratio, Citations per faculty, International Faculty Ratio, and International Student Ratio. 

Check the rest of the list here