ETH Zurich once again makes the top 10 universities in the world

Switzerland continues to be home to world-class higher education, with three Swiss universities ranking among the top 100 in the QS World University Rankings 2027.

2027 QS World University Rankings

Every year, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a higher education analysis company, compiles a list of what it considers the best higher education institutions in the world for its World University Rankings. The 2027 edition includes 1.504 universities, with 98 new entrants, representing over 100 locations worldwide.

QS decides whether a university is “good” using 10 key metrics, each with its own weighting, to calculate an overall score out of 100. The metrics are: academic reputation; citations per faculty; employer reputation; employment outcomes; faculty-to-student ratio; international faculty ratio; international research network; international student diversity; international student ratio; and sustainability.

In the 2027 ranking, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was named the best university in the world for the 15th consecutive year, with a perfect score of 100. Imperial College London and Stanford University came in joint second place, the University of Oxford in fourth, while Harvard University rounded out the top five. 

ETH Zurich drops to 8th-best university in the world

ETH Zurich has once again ranked as one of the top universities in the world, and is one of just two institutions outside of the US and the UK to make the top 10. 

ETH has, however, fallen one place compared to last year, ranking eighth in the world, down from seventh in the QS World University Rankings for 2026. The university’s overall score this year is 96,3, compared to 96,7 in 2026 and 93,9 in 2025.

Zurich’s main university scored well into the nineties across a number of categories, including research, employability, international student ratio and sustainability. The university was let down slightly by its faculty-to-student ratio, with a score of 65.

6 Swiss universities rank among top 200 in the world

These are the best universities in Switzerland in 2027, and how they fared in the overall QS ranking:

• =8. ETH Zurich
• =22. EPFL - École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
• =98. University of Zurich
• =150. University of Basel
• 168. University of Geneva
• =191. University of Bern
• =233. University of Lausanne 
• =456. USI - Università della Svizzera italiana
• = 670. Université de Fribourg
• 851-900 - Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)
• 1201-1400 - University of Neuchâtel

For more information and to see the full ranking, visit the QS website.

How does QS decide which universities are the best?

University rankings are a relatively new phenomenon. The first global rankings were published in 2003, and the first QS ranking was published in 2004.

Since then, prospective students have increasingly used rankings to inform their decision about where to study. Simultaneously, there has been increasing scepticism about the methodologies and techniques that university ranking companies use to determine which institutions are “the best”. 

For example, the QS ranking weighs each of its 10 metrics differentlyQS ranking weighs each of its 10 metrics differently. Academic reputation has a 30 percent weighting, while faculty-to-student ratio has a 10 percent weighting and employment outcomes have a 5 percent weighting. 

According to the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research, it is not possible to assess the “multidimensional concept of university quality” based on such limited metrics, and rankings largely serve the businesses that publish them.

This is because a significant element of these ranking companies’ business models is to “collect vast amounts of data from universities and publicly accessible sources, which they then privatise in order to market them to universities, governments, and other interested parties in the form of performance analytics”,  according to the United Nations University (UNU).

The more universities included, the more ranking companies can “expand the market of prospective buyers of their data products, analytics, and consulting services”, says the UNU.

What’s more, if institutions criticise ranking companies for their limited assessments and profit-driven approach, and consequently decide to withhold data, they drop down in rankings or drop out entirely. 

For example, Utrecht University regularly ranks among the top 70 institutions in the Times Higher Education (THE) ranking. But in 2023, the Dutch university decided to withhold data, saying that the international rankings were “not compatible with the university's strategic plan and the concept of ‘Open Science’”. Since then, the university has no longer been included in the THE.

Speaking to IamExpat, Jelena Brankovic, a researcher at the University of Bielefeld whose expertise includes the university ranking industry, advised prospective students to “approach [rankings] with a healthy dose of scepticism”. 

“[Students] should never rely only on one source of information, such as a ranking, but should try to cast a wide net, compare information from various sources, discuss with peers and parents, and assess this against their own preferences,” Brankovic said.