ARWU, considered one of the leading international league tables, assesses more than 1,300 universities every year using six measures and publishes data on the best 500.

Universities are ranked by several indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution.

The categories in which the University has excelled are related to the number of papers published in Nature and Science and the number of times its researchers are cited. It also scores highly when the size of its staff is weighed against its overall performance.