Top 10 Student Cities 2022 according to QS Rankings
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The aim of the QS Best Student Cities ranking is to showcase the best urban destinations for international students for study and work. This is based on a wide range of indicators grouped into five key categories. If a city wants to be considered for this ranking, it must have a population of over 250,000 and be home to at least two universities featured in the most recent QS World University Rankings. As per recent calculations, about 164 cities qualified for consideration for this ranking.
How QS Ranks Cities?
The following indicators are used to assess each category which is outlined below:
- University rankings: This category reflects the collective performance of a city’s universities as per the QS World University Rankings. Indicators such as the number of universities in a city and lending recognition to the locations of the world’s elite institutions are used. The indicators used to determine university rankings are institution count, indexed score (collective performance of all institutions in the city), and top score (position of the highest-ranked institution in the city).
- Student mix: This category takes a look at the student diversity in the city, including an overall and an international perspective. Indicators like student population, international volume, international ratio, and tolerance and inclusion are used.
- Desirability: It reflects the overall desirability of each destination. Whether it is students seeking cities rich in opportunity or localities that are safer, a wide range of pointers is considered. Desirability metrics considered are Economist Liveability Index, Globalisation and World Cities index (GaWC) score, Safety score, Pollution score and Corruption score.
- Employer activity: This provides an indication of which cities are most highly sought-after as recruiting grounds among graduate employers. Indicators like Domestic Employer Popularity, International Employer Popularity, and Youth Employment Bonus are indicators of Employer Activity metric.
- Affordability: As the name suggests, this metric recognises the importance of affordability for most prospective students and their families. It draws on a range of sources such as tuition fees, Big Mac Index (retail pricing in cities worldwide), iPad Index, and cost of living to give an indication of how affordable a city is likely to be.
- Student view: This metric rests solely on student feedback as it is based on a student survey from over 95,000 students worldwide. It provides ex-students with an opportunity to share their experience of studying in a particular city. The survey mainly concentrates on student experience and their decision to stay after graduation. Based on this, QS determines whether a city is liveable or desirable as per a student’s perspective.
Lastly, each indicator is converted into an ordinal by ranking the results and subtracting the rank of each result from the maximum. In some cases, the underlying data is reconfigured to ensure comparable application of weights (i.e. tuition fee values are organised into ranges). After this, the scores are combined with the weights (these are relative weights within the category) and scaled to the top-performing city in the category to give a score with a maximum of 100 for each category. Then, these are summed to produce the final score.
Top 10 Students Cities 2022
London continues to rank at the top this year as well. As home to several leading universities, including University College London (UCL), Imperial College London, and King's College London, the city has continued to be a student favourite for the past few years. Here are the remaining top 10 student cities according to QS 2022:
| Rank |
City |
Overall Score |
| 1 |
100 |
|
| 2 |
97.4 |
|
| =3 |
Seoul, South Korea |
96.1 |
| =3 |
Tokyo, Japan |
96.1 |
| 5 |
Berlin, Germany |
95.9 |
| 6 |
95.5 |
|
| 7 |
94.9 |
|
| 8 |
Sydney, Australia |
94.3 |
| =9 |
92.1 |
|
| =9 |
92.1 |
Note: The final table is based on an overall score out of 100, showing rank, score, country, and city names and scores out of 100 in each of the six categories.
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