Times Higher Education (THE) has announced the results of its World University Rankings for 2024, and this year 21 universities in Germany have made it into the top 200 - making Germany the third-best-represented country in the ranking.

THE World University Rankings 2024

Each year, Times Higher Education puts together a list of the best universities in the world according to the British magazine. This year’s list examined more than 1.904 universities across 108 territories worldwide.

To put together the ranking, THE groups performance into five areas; Teaching (the learning environment); Research environment (volume, income and reputation); Research quality (citation impact, research strength, research excellence and research influence); International outlook (staff, students and research); and Industry (income and patents). However, the 20th edition also saw the introduction of a new methodology, which increased the performance indicators under these five umbrella areas from 13 to 18.

Predictably, the usual suspects dominated the top 10 spots in the 2024 ranking. This year marks the eighth in a row that the University of Oxford has ranked in first place. Overall, the United States was the country with the highest number of institutions being ranked in the top 200; Stanford, MIT and Harvard took second, third and fourth respectively. Cambridge University closed out the Anglo-American-dominated top 5.

The best universities in Germany in 2024 according to THE

Germany performed consistently in the 2024 ranking, pushing 21 universities into the top 200 and maintaining its title of third-best represented country in the table. There was also little switch-up when it came to the order in which the German universities appeared in the ranking.

The Technical University of Munich maintained its overall ranking spot of 30th and was the best-ranked university in Germany. While Ludwig Maximilian University Munich was still the second-highest ranked institution in Germany, it has fallen from 33rd to 38th since last year.

Another consistently strong performer, Heidelberg maintained its position as the third-best German university in the THE ranking for 2024, but dropped down from 43rd to place 47th in the broader ranking. Overall, while German universities did well, they all performed slightly worse than in last year’s ranking.

Rising stars when it came to the best places to study in Germany included the Technical University of Berlin, which moved from spot 156 to 136, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which came in spot 140 - an improvement from 2023 when it took 189th place.

The THE top 10 best universities in Germany in 2024

These 21 German universities all made it into the top 200 in the world in 2024:

• =30 Technical University of Munich
• =38 LMU Munich
• 47 Heidelberg University
• =87 Humboldt University of Berlin
• 90 RWTH Aachen University
• 91 University of Bonn
• 94 Charité University Hospital Berlin
• =95 University of Tübingen
• 102 Free University of Berlin
• =111 University of Göttingen
• 128 University of Freiburg
• =136 University of Hamburg
• =136 Technical University of Berlin
• =140 Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
• 160 University of Cologne
• =161 TU Dresden
• =175 University of Würzburg
• =187 University of Mannheim
• =193 University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• =193 University of Münster
• =193 Ulm University

For the full list of universities, or more information on how the list was compiled, see the Times Higher Education website.

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