The Times of London Higher Education Supplement recently ranked Pitt 32nd among all U.S…. The Times of London Higher Education Supplement recently ranked Pitt 32nd among all U.S. universities and ninth among public U.S. universities. The THES also ranked Pitt at 88th globally, which is a significant jump from last year’s rank of 193rd.

Not only did Pitt rapidly climb the charts, it also placed ahead of other prominent institutions such as Penn State University, University of Southern California, Georgetown University and Rice University.

According the THES’s Web site, the methodology behind the rankings fell into two categories: qualitative and quantitative.

In the qualitative realm, 40 percent of the total score was based upon a survey of 3,703 academics from all over the world. They were asked to name the top 30 universities for research in their particular field. Ten percent of the total score was data compiled from “a vital group of outsiders who observe the world’s universities closely,” according to the THES’s Web site.

These outsiders were 736 graduate employers who listed the universities from which they liked to recruit.

On the quantitative side, 20 percent of the total score was based upon the staff-to-student ratio. An additional 20 percent of the total score dealt with the number of citations in academic papers. Five percent of the total score was based upon the number of international faculty members, and the final 5 percent was based upon the number of international students.

Newsweek’s ranking of the Top 100 Global Universities borrowed parts of the methodology the THES used to determine its rankings. However, Pitt ranked significantly higher than it did in the THES, placing 37th globally.

In Newsweek’s poll, Pitt ranked ahead of prestigious institutions such as Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Boston University and New York University.

According to Newsweek’s Web site, 50 percent of its score was based upon “the number of highly-cited researchers in various academic fields, the number of articles published in Nature and Science, and the number of articles listed in the ISI Social Sciences and Arts ‘ Humanities indices.”

The next 40 percent used factors from the THES. It relied on the percentage of international students and faculty, the number of citations per faculty member, and faculty-to-student ratio.

The final 10 percent of the score was based upon the number of volumes in the universities’ library systems.

U.S. News ‘ World Report used a completely different method for their rankings. As a result, Pitt tied for 57th with Ohio State University and Boston University among all U.S. universities. Pitt placed 19th among all U.S. public universities, jumping from 26th in 2005, 27th in 2004, 31st in 2003 and 39th in 2002.

Although Pitt did not place as high in this survey, it placed above schools such as the University of Delaware, the University of Connecticut, Fordham University and Virginia Tech.

With all the subjectivity surrounding these rankings, do they really matter to high school students in search of the perfect school?

“I didn’t even look at rankings for my schools,” freshman Martha Arnold said.

Apparently she isn’t the only one.

“I really never looked at the rankings when choosing which school I went to,” senior Stephanie Zilavy said.