Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has released the 2025 edition of its World University Rankings. This year it evaluated over 1,503 institutions in 105 locations worldwide. 

Queen’s rose 16 places in the rankings, from 209th in 2024 to 193rd globally in 2025, breaking into the top 200 worldwide. This is in addition to a similar improvement last year. Queen's also moved into the top 10 in Canadian universities, moving from 11th to 10th out of 30 Canadian universities participating. 

Key to Queen’s gains the past two years has been the inclusion of five per cent of an institution’s scores related to sustainability. Queen’s has been therefore able to leverage the work done for our THE Impact rankings submission.

 
Methodology

The score for the sustainability component is taken from the analysis of the standalone QS Sustainability Ranking that evaluates the social and environmental impact of universities as centres of education and research. Queen’s ranked 64th globally in the 2024 QS Sustainability Rankings, up from 171-180th in 2023.

In the international research network category, the university rose 56 places to rank 467th globally. This indicator assesses the richness and diversity of an institution’s research partnerships through the number of co-publications with international authors. 

Queen’s rose two spots to rank 144th globally in the employer reputation category, which takes data from the annual QS Employer Reputation Survey, designed to evaluate the perceptions of global employers on which institutions are providing the most job-ready graduates.

The QS World University Rankings have been released every year since 2004. Their five performance lenses are weighed to assess universities on their research and discovery, employability and outcomes, learning experience, global engagement and sustainability. Queen’s has participated in the rankings since 2012.