UF was ranked among the top 100 universities in the world by U.S. News and World Report, paving the way for the university’s preeminence plan.
U.S. News and World Report released its first global universities ranking, classifying the top 500 universities in the world.
UF spokesman Steve Orlando said the ranking has identified the university as a preeminent university.
“We’ve been named among the top 10 percent universities in the world, which is certainly where we want to be,” he said. “That also helps our preeminence plan.”
UF was listed as No. 53 among other top-100 universities, such as Pennsylvania State University at No. 52, KU Leuven in Belgium tied with UF at No. 53 and Karolinska Institutet (Institute) in Sweden at No. 55.
Institutions were ranked based on factors such as global research reputation, publications and number of cited papers, distinguishing these global rankings from the U.S. News Best Colleges and Best Graduate Schools ranks.
Orlando said the ranking is one of the stated goals of UF’s preeminence plan, UF Rising, created by the university to establish itself as one of the nation’s best public research universities.
“We know parents and students look at those rankings,” he said. “We also need metrics to chart our progress as a university.”
The university looks to other public research universities as a way of tracking its progress each year, Orlando said.
UF also tracks its progress by comparing itself to schools such as the University of California, Berkeley and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“From public universities we were ranked 14, so that’s what we’re looking at,” Orlando said.
UF was ranked No. 48 in national university rankings last year by the U.S. News and World Report.
Sirah Mora, a UF international studies junior, said she’s noticed the impact of UF Rising, along with the university’s growing research projects.
“I think we’re definitely growing as a university in terms of the amount of research that we’re doing,” Mora, 20, said. “There’s definitely a lot of medical research and engineering research projects going around, and I think it is helping our overall rank as a school.”
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 10/31/2014]
