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ETH Zurich remains top uni in Europe: QS list

Malcolm Curtis
Malcolm Curtis - [email protected]
ETH Zurich remains top uni in Europe: QS list
Building at ETH Zurich. Photo: Roland Fischer/Wikimedia Commons

Switzerland’s two federal institutes of technology, ETH Zurich and EPFL, rate among the world’s top 20 universities in the latest QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) rankings for 2014, published on Tuesday.

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ETH Zurich remained 12th in the list, unchanged from last year, and ranked as the top university in continental Europe, according to the authoritative QS rankings.

Its sister institute, EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), jumped to 17th place from 19th in 2013.

The two Swiss schools are renowned for engineering and scientific studies.

The list of the top universities, judged by a survey of academic output, is dominated by American and British universities, headed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in first place followed by Cambridge University and Imperial College London (tied for second place) Harvard and Oxford University and University College London jointly ranked fifth.

“Consistently ranked the top university in continental Europe, ETH Zurich . . . is a leading player in research and education in Switzerland and worldwide,” QS said in a summary.

The university’s 16 departments offer Bachelor, Master and Doctoral programmes in engineering and natural sciences, said the summary, which noted that while bachelor programmes are offered in German, “English is the common language at the graduate level”.

QS underlined ETH Zurich’s international outlook, with 70 percent of professors recruited from abroad.

QS also highlighted the diverse backgrounds of staff and students at EPFL, from around 120 nationalities.

It said the Lausanne institute “has evolved into a top-ranked research and teaching institution that attracts some of the best intellects of the world”.

Other Swiss universities among the world's top 100 included the University of Zurich (57th) and the University of Geneva (85th).

The QS World University Rankings annually rate 800 universities, according to such factors as reputation and research citations.

For the complete list of top universities, check here.

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