It has come in between 701 and 750 out of the 1,000 universities on the list, which are the top universities of the total of more than 18,500 in the world

The URV has entered the QS World University Rankings (2020) for the first time since it was first drawn up by QS Quacquarelli Symonds in 2004. It has come in between 701 and 750 out of the 1,000 universities on the list, which are the top universities of the total of more than 18,500 in the world according to the World Higher Education Database. In this latest edition of the ranking the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) occupies the first position for the eighth consecutive year, followed by the University of Stanford and the University of Harvard.

QS uses six metrics to compile the ranking: academic reputation, which is based on a survey that of more than 94,000 academics (40% of the total score); employer reputation, based on a survey of 44,000 employers who are asked about the relation between the institution and the employability of its graduates (10%); the citations per faculty, which measures the impact of research by dividing the number of citations received by all papers over a five-year period by the number of faculty members (20%); the faculty/student ratio (20%); and the international faculty ratio (5%) and the international student ratio (5%).

The URV was given an overall score of 15.2-16.6 and comes in between positions 701 and 750, the same position as the University of Alacant. It is one of the three universities in Spain that have entered the ranking for the first time, alongside the IE University and the University of Alacant.

The metric for which the URV was given the highest score is citations per faculty (32.2 points), which would place the University in position 415 if this were the only metric to be taken into account.

The Universitat Rovira i Virgili is one of 27 institutions in Spain in the ranking and, of these, it is the 21^st in Spain and 6^th in Catalonia. This year there are 400 European institutions on the list.