PENANG, 20 June 2018 – Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) is ranked the 14th world's best young university in the recently released 'QS Top 50 Under 50' ranking by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).

USM was previously (2018) ranked 23^rd, where it made its debut in the young universities listing in 2016.

In the latest 2019 listing, four Malaysian public universities are listed witnessing USM as among the top three in the list.

Describing this as the University’s ‘best performance ever’, Vice-Chancellor Professor Datuk Dr. Asma Ismail, said the significant improvement is a result of continuous improvement made by the University in its fundamentals, in line with the spirit of making USM a preferred university. 

“We believe this is a great achievement, manifesting the commitment made by the University’s staff, both academics and administrations, as well as its alumni and stakeholders.

“We are aware that the competition is stiff and it is very important that we create a great learning experience for the students and a conducive environment to do impactful research,” she emphasised. 

She said, USM has also been showcasing numerous other achievements in the current year especially when the University, through its academic, Dr. Khayriyyah Mohd Hanafiah was named as World’s Best Science Communicator at the FameLab International 2018 and having 5 of its scientists in the list of six to represent Malaysia to the 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting from 24-29 June 2018 in Lindau, Germany.

“This is a statement that we have been gearing up rightly and given steady chance, I believe Malaysia will become a much more dominant nation in higher education, beyond ranking,” she added.

Meanwhile, in the latest QS World University Ranking 2019 released in early June 2018, USM has gone up 57 places to position 207 in the recently released QS-WUR 2019, compared to 264 in the year before.

This also affirms the fact that USM is among the Top 21% of the 1,011 institutions ranked by QS from 1,233 institutions evaluated worldwide for the 2019 ranking list.