Peyton Stotelmyre / Daily Nexus

UC Santa Barbara was listed 24th best university in the world by U.S. News & World Report in their “Best Global University” rankings, released Tuesday.

The rankings provide a list of universities with exceptional research and academic reputation for prospective students looking to study abroad. The University was ranked among 1,000 universities across 60 countries in the world. Other UC campuses listed in the top 25 are UC Berkeley ranked fourth, UCLA ranked 10th and UC San Diego ranked 15th.

In addition, UC Santa Barbara was ranked eighth among public schools and 37th overall in the nation.

According to U.S. News, the rankings were calculated based on 12 indicators that evaluate the school’s research performance and academic reputation.  These indicators are gathered and analyzed by data from Web of Science, an online database for citable references.

Indicators with the most weight for the global scores include “Global Research Reputation” and “Regional Research Reputation.” Indicators also measure the amount of citations referencing research papers from the University to analyze its impact in the global academic community.

U.S. News reported a global score of 81.4 for UC Santa Barbara. Among the indicators that contributed to the score, UCSB was ranked 61st for Global Research Reputation, 125th for Regional Research Reputation, 33rd for International Collaborations and ninth for percentage of highly cited papers that are among the top one percent most cited.

UC Santa Barbara was also ranked for a variety of academic subjects including ninth for space science, 11th for physics, 11th for material science and 12th for environment and ecology.

Several changes to the methodology were made to improve the rank’s relevance, including dropping consideration for the number of doctoral degrees awarded and adding country-specific rankings.

The University has 2,693 enrolled international students and 211 international staff.

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