QS Ranking: Environmental and Agricultural Sciences on the rise

The QS Ranking divides its evaluations into study subjects. For example, the subject external page Earth Sciences covers topics such as «The evolution of life, (...), Oceanic and atmospheric phenomena, and Processes on the earth's surface», which are also focus areas of the Institute for Atmosphere and Climate Science (IAC) as well as research fields of other professorships at D-USYS. The broad range of topics at D-USYS can therefore be found in the QS ranking within three categories.

The following assessments are therefore relevant for the Department of Environmental Systems Sciences:

• external page Ranking of the Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich
  Worldwide and in Europe rank 1, since 2015
• external page Ranking of the ETH Agricultural and Forestry Sciences
  Worldwide rank 5, in Europe rank 4
• external page Ranking of ETH Zurich Environmental Sciences
  Worldwide rank 3, in Europe rank 1

ETH Zurich on seventh rank worldwide

Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) published its overall World University Rankings 2019 back in June 2018. They show that ETH improved its ranking by three positions compared to the previous year and now ranks seventh in the world. QS has now provided the rankings for individual subject areas. The results place ETH in a similarly positive light. «QS ranked ETH in 22 subject areas. Improving upon the previous year in 15 disciplines, ETH held its position in six, and dropped one position in only one subject,» as ETH Zurich reported.

Reputation rated particularly high

The QS rankings by external page QS Quacquarelli Symonds have been published since 2004 and now include 1,222 universities. In the rankings by subject area, QS compares universities across a total of 48 different disciplines. By comparison with other rankings, the QS World University Rankings attribute particular weight to the reputation a university enjoys within the expert community: depending on the subject area, this accounts for 40 to 60 percent to the overall result.

QS also asks employers to rate the graduates of the various universities (reputation with employers), which accounts for 10 and 30 percent to the total score per subject area. Other indicators include the citations per publication (10 to 25 percent) and what is known as the «h index» (between 10 and 25 percent): aiming to measure both the productivity and the influence of the academics, this latter index is based on a selection of the university's most frequently cited works and the number of citations they have received in other publications.