The University of Costa Rica (UCR) climbed 60 spots in the QS World University Rankings carried out by Quacquarelli Symonds Limited.

“The ranking takes into consideration the institutions’ qualities, from employability of graduates to sports facilities and community engagement using the QS Stars audit which evaluated each institution against over 50 different indicators and and awards universities between one and five + stars over eight wider fields, as well as an overall rating”, explains the report.

The University of Costa Rica was in the 471-480 rank last year, while this year it appears in the 411-420 rank, remaining among the best 500 universities in the world, while in Latin America it takes position 15 improving 4 spots in comparison to the previous report.

“Among the top 20 universities in Latin America , the UCR is the institution that had the most significant improvement. The second university to climb several spots was the Catholic University of Perú that climbed 50 spots”, explained Dr. Marlen León, UCR dean.

This edition of the ranking lists 959 institutions of 84 countries, but initially the lists considers 4,388 universities.

From all public and private universities in the country, the ranking only includes the University of Costa Rica and the National University (UNA) which is listed in the 800-1000 rank.

In the top 100 in the world only one Latin America institution is included, the Buenos Aires University (Argentina); the top 5 in the region includes Brazil’s Sao Paulo University, Mexico’s UNAM , Chile’s Catholic University (UC) and Brazil’s Unicamp.

The University of Costa Rica currently has a student population of over 38 thousand it’s a public institution located in San Pedro and Sabanilla, Montes de Oca.

In the overall ranking the first place was taken for the sixth consecutive year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) , followed by the Stanford University, Harvard, Caltech, and the University of Cambridge.