Boosting our QS world rankings

News

Posted on Tuesday 1 September 2026

Thanks to your efforts over the past two years, York is now ranked 26 places higher than we were in 2025, thanks to our extensive work in Academic and Employer contact gathering. We need to go further.

York's rise in the latest QS World University Rankings followed a concerted effort to maximise our submission and to improve the reach of our contacts. This latest ranking builds on a 15 place jump in the previous year, cementing a clear reversal of a decade of decline in QS and showcasing the University’s growing global reputation and strong graduate employment record, which are both also key to successful international student recruitment.

The QS Academic and Employer Reputation Surveys contribute 45% towards our overall ranking, and up to 90% of our subject rankings.

QS academic reputation survey

To ensure we are doing all we can to improve York’s Academic Reputation score, we are asking all academics to provide new international academic contacts.

Why new? QS aggregates nominations over five years, and duplicate contacts within this period only count once.
Why international? International nominations are weighted at 85%, compared to domestic nominations at just 15%.
Check your contacts are new and submit your contacts to us.

These academic contacts can then be supplied to QS to take part in this survey, and hopefully nominate York, improving our standing in the world rankings.

An ‘academic contact’ is someone who has knowledge of academic excellence in a higher education institution (HEI) and is involved in teaching and/or research, including academics, research and library staff.

QS employer reputation survey

We need your help to reach out to employer contacts to secure their consent for the survey.

Please reach out to your employer contacts, asking them for consent for their details to be supplied to QS to take part in this survey.
An 'employer contact' is anyone involved in hiring decisions at an organisation (excluding HEIs).
Please use our email template to contact them directly or send them our webpage - york.ac.uk/about/rankings/qs-world-rankings.

We can contact multiple people at one organisation. Unlike the academic reputation survey there is no difference in weighting between UK/international contacts.

Further information

For more information, see the Academic Survey and Employer Survey slide decks, as well as Academic FAQs and Employer FAQs.

The internal deadline both for submitting contacts to Strategic Insight and Analysis for the Academic survey, and emailing your contacts directly for the Employer Survey is Wednesday 30 September.