4 Philippine schools secure spots in world's best universities rankings

MANILA, Philippines - Four institutions from the country were included in the latest rankings of top 800 universities worldwide, with the University of the Philippines (UP) remaining as the country's top university.

The national university landed at the 367th spot in the 2014/2015 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, an improvement from last's year's 380th place.

Ateneo de Manila University similarly leaped, placing at 461st to 470th spot from the previous year's 501st to 550th. The University of Santo Tomas stayed at 701+ while the De La Salle University dropped to 651st to 700th from last year's 601st place.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology from the United States (US) topped the list, followed by the United Kingdom's (UK) University of Cambridge and Imperial College London at second. They were followed by Harvard University (US), University College London (UK) and University of Oxford (UK), Stanford University (US), California Institute of Technology (US), Princeton University (US) and Yale University (US).

QS noted that it based its methodology on four broad areas of interest to prospective students: research, teaching, employability and international outlook. The four areas are then evaluated using six indicators: academic reputation based on a global survey of academics (40 percent), employer reputation based on a global survey of graduate employers (10 percent), faculty/student ratio (20 percent), citations per faculty (20 percent), international student ratio (5 percent) and international staff ratio (5 percent).