According to the 2013-2014 ranking by Times Higher Education (THE), Korea University (KU) ranked 206th place. This was a leap from last year’s 239th place, and it was the biggest improvement out of all the universities in Korea.

The THE ranking is one of the world’s most well-known ranking and it is based on five categorizations: teaching (30 percent), international outlook (7.5 percent), industry income (2.5 percent), research (30 percent), and citations (30 percent). In these categories, various factors are considered. For example, in the teaching categorization, the learning environment is considered while the research categorization takes the volume, income, and reputation into account. KU managed to score higher in each of the categorization with the exception of the research criteria.

This year, the California Institute of Technology (CIT) ranked first place with a total of 94.9 out of 100 in scoring. Universities such as Harvard, University of Oxford, and Stanford University followed behind in pursuit consecutively. Other Korean universities were also ranked in THE. Seoul National University (SNU) ranked 44th place while Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) ranked 56th and 60th place each. KU’s so-called “rival” school, Yonsei University (YU) scored 190th place in the ranking.

Although KU still has a long way to go compared to other Korean universities, KU is nonetheless on its way of making itself as one of the best universities in the world.