Four UCT subjects in top 100

The University of Cape Town (UCT) has been ranked among the top 100 universities in four subject areas by the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) 2020 recently released by ShanghaiRanking. The subjects are oceanography, mining and mineral engineering, public health, and clinical medicine.

UCT performed best in oceanography, placing 48th in the world. The top three universities for this subject were the University of Washington (1st), the University of California, San Diego (2nd), and Sorbonne University (3rd).

This year’s rankings include more than 4 000 universities in 54 subjects across natural sciences, engineering, life sciences, medical sciences and social sciences. UCT was ranked in 23 of these.

UCT’s mining and mineral engineering, and public health were both ranked between 51 and 75, and clinical medicine in the 76 to 100 range.

The 2020 GRAS list from ShanghaiRanking evaluated institutions according to five indicators. These are the number of papers published in first quartile journals by journal impact factor, citations (compared to the world average), international collaboration, papers in top journals/conferences, and staff winning significant awards.

Seven UCT subjects performed well in the 2020 Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings by Subject earlier this year. Development studies at UCT was ranked 10th in the world. Anatomy and physiology, anthropology, archaeology, architecture/built environment, geography and medicine all featured in the top 100.

Read more about ShanghaiRanking’s GRAS 2020 methodology.