By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Seoul National University (SNU) has placed 51st in a university ranking by The Times of London, up 12 places from last year's 63rd.
The Times announced Thursday the Times Higher Education Supplement which shows the world's 200 top universities based on the results of a survey of more than 5,000 academics.
According to SNU, its natural science department ability ranked at 38th, bioscience at 46th, engineering and communication technology at 56th, social science at 57th, and humanities and art at 91st.
The school's impact factor per professor, a measure of the citations to science and social science journals, jumped from 160th place to 88th, and the professor-student ratio increased from the 93rd to 56th. Peer review, in which academics evaluate peer scholars, also rose from 44th to 42nd.
However, SNU's recruiter review, which was evaluated by international companies, fell from the 138th to the 146th, while the ratio of foreign professors among total professors dropped from the 185th to 192nd. The placing for the ratio of foreign students remained the same as last year, 181st.
``We obtained good scores in peer review, as well as in impact factor, which indicates research influence,'' an SNU official said.
SNU President Lee Jang-moo said the school would make efforts to reach the top 10 in the world by 2025.
Among Korean universities, SNU and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) were included in the top 200 universities, with KAIST's ranking rising from last year's 198th to 132nd. Korea University, which ranked at 150th last year, was excluded from the ranking.
The top 10 universities for 2007 were: Harvard; Cambridge; Oxford; Yale; Imperial College London; Princeton; California Institute of Technology (Caltech); Chicago; University College London (UCL); and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The United Kingdom and the United States still dominate, with Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and Yale keeping the top four positions for the second consecutive year. Forty-three North American universities were included, up from last year's 37, while the number of Asian universities rose from 12 to 13. But the number of European universities fell from 41 to 35.
rahnita@koreatimes.co.kr
