U of T ranks 25th among universities worldwide
ShanghaiRanking Consultancy has ranked the University of Toronto as the top Canadian university in its 2025 academic ranking.
ShanghaiRanking Consultancy recently updated its annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), assessing over 2,500 universities to determine the top 1,000. Among these many respected institutions, the University of Toronto (U of T) ranked 25th worldwide, one place higher than its 2024 ranking.
First published in June 2003, the ARWU has been continuously updated on a yearly basis. Although it originally evaluated the global standings of Chinese universities, it has since gained a lot of attention from universities and the media internationally.
The ARWU is based on six indicators, consisting of “the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance of a university,” according to its website.
U of T’s higher ranking compared to last year’s is largely due to Professor Geoffrey Hinton receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024 for his vital contributions to artificial intelligence.
The ARWU also displays the global rank of a university in specific subjects. For example, U of T is ranked 13th worldwide in mathematics and 17th in computer science. According to the ARWU, the university’s best-ranked subjects consist of sociology, medical science, and public health, ranking second, fifth, and seventh worldwide, respectively.
After the release of the 2025 ARWU, The Medium interviewed U of T students and staff about their takes on the new ranking.
One second-year student, who asked to remain anonymous, stated they came to U of T specifically due to its high global ranking, with their decision being influenced by Professor Hinton’s recent Nobel Prize win.
Darren Ng, a third-year psychology student from Hong Kong, stated that while he personally did not care much about the ranking, his parents certainly did. He also added that these rankings mattered much more to Eastern job markets than Western ones.
On the other hand, Antoine Gagnon, a freshman, also said that the ranking did not matter much when he chose to study at U of T.
Colin Hill, an English professor at U of T, felt that the ARWU and other kinds of university rankings were artificial and not that meaningful, saying that they did not affect his decision to teach at U of T and likely did not affect other professors’ decisions either.
While the ARWU clearly has a broad influence, the general population seems largely unaware of it. When questioned about U of T’s global rankings, most of the interviewees thought that it was about the QS World University Rankings rather than the ARWU.
Regardless, many universities have cited the ARWU in their reports and included their rankings in promotional material, with a 2005 survey by The Economist stating that it was the most-used university ranking at the time.
While it may not be as influential as it once was, the ARWU is still an important benchmark among universities due to its precise data-driven approach and emphasis on research results.
