The QS World University Rankings by Subject places KTH at 29th worldwide, compared with its ranking at 36th in 2015 – the last time the engineering and technology subject rankings were published.
Per-Anders Östling, the rankings expert for KTH, says that KTH’s higher ranking in the wider subject area of Engineering & Technology is due to improved overall scores in the indexes of Academic Reputation, Employer Reputation and the H-index (a measure of citations). In addition, KTH advanced from place 93 to 90 in the area of Natural Sciences.
Other areas where KTH was rated higher this time around were in Architecture/Built Environment, where the university was placed 23rd, and in Statistics & Operational Research, which was ranked among the top 51-100.
In Electrical Engineering KTH was ranked at 17, compared to 26 in 2015. The rankings were lowered for Mechanical Engineering (from 25 to 39), Materials Science (from 30 to 39) and for Civil & Structural Engineering (from 40 to 41).
“The reason for the decline is that in comparison with other universities in these same subject areas, KTH received lower ratings in Employer Reputation and the average number of citations and H-index,” Östling says.
Within the topic rankings, QS World University Rankings by Subject takes account of 4,438 universities. More than 18,900 applications were analyzed. The rankings are based on various indicators that are weighted where, for example, academic reputation represents 40 percent of the final grade and the average number of citations is 25 percent.