La Sapienza ranked among top 150 universities in the world.

Rome's Università La Sapienza is the top university in Italy according to the 2024 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) of Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, a prestigious independent research organisation on higher education.

La Sapienza is the only Italian university to be ranked in the 101-150 range, making it one of the top 150 universities in the world in the ARWU rankings.

"For the third consecutive year our university is among the top 150 universities at a global level" - rector Antonella Polimeni said in a statement on Thursday - "a sign of the prestige it enjoys at an international level, above all thanks to the ability to produce quality scientific research in all disciplinary fields".

Launched in 2003, ARWU ranks 2,500 universities - out of a global total of around 18,000 - publishing the top 1,000.

World universities are ranked using criteria such as the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of highly-cited researchers, and per capita academic performance.

The world's top three universities in 2024 according to ARWU are once again Harvard, Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Earlier this year La Sapienza was rated the top university in the world for Classical Studies and Ancient History, for the fourth year in a row, in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings.

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