Best Universities for Life Sciences in 2012

Considering a life sciences degree? Find out which universities are strongest in this field, with the 2012 QS World University Rankings by Subject.

Covering medicine, biology, pharmacy and psychology, the life science rankings make for interesting reading.

Trying to understand and to heal living things is a complex business. But that is exactly what subjects which fall under the life science umbrella aim to do.

Encompassing pharmacy & pharmacology, psychology, medicine and the biological sciences – itself an umbrella term which covers subjects as diverse as zoology and neurology – these are some of the most academically challenging disciplines.

Resultantly, the payoff can be huge. For one thing, the careers to which studying these subjects can lead are some of the most lucrative and highly sought out there.

But more importantly perhaps, is that they allow people to really help others, be it through developing a new drug for a previously untreatable condition or just helping an elderly person get through winter.

They are also extremely fast-paced, with new developments occurring all the time at universities and other research institutes. If you want to be stationed at the forefront of knowledge creation, there are few better places to be than one of a top university’s life science departments. Where are these top universities? Well, there is a place you can find out…

View from the top

If you’ve ever looked at a university ranking before, the name of one university will be extremely familiar to you: Harvard. And, as might be expected, Harvard performs regally in the life sciences rankings, finishing top in all four subjects.

And all the other names you might expect to see feature pretty consistently too. Massachusetts Institute of Technology? Check. Oxford and Cambridge? Check. University of California Berkeley and Los Angeles, Stanford, and Yale? Check, check and check! At the top end of the scale, the US and UK dominate.

You have to go as far down as 15th position in the biology or medicine ranking to find a non-US/UK institution (ETH Zurich and the University of Melbourne respectively). In the psychology ranking, the highest non-US/UK institution – the University of Toronto – fares a little better, coming in at 13th.

The pharmacy & pharmacology rankings bucks the trend though, with the National University of Singapore (NUS) coming in third, and half of the top ten places going to non-US/UK institutions.

Like other subjects, these two countries dominate the numbers as well, with US occupying as many as 64 places in a single ranking (biology), and UK accounting for 28 institutions in the psychology ranking. However, this is not the full story…

Life sciences and medicine in Europe

The life science rankings are illuminating, as they reveal that quality in these subjects is by no means restricted to these two go-to countries.If you’re considering a life sciences subject, in fact, you will have a glut of options.

The real headline statistic is the performance of universities in Europe, but not in the UK.

Germany leads the continent, with a whopping 17 institutions in the pharmacy & pharmacology ranking for instance, but what’s really interesting here is how spread out the quality is. Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Belgium, Spain and Italy are all consistently well represented, and even Czech and Polish institutions make an appearance in the pharmacy & pharmacology ranking.

Quality not quantity

Australia and New Zealand perform particularly well in the psychology rankings, with 20 institutions appearing in the top 200. Two Australian universities – Monash and Melbourne – also make the top 10 for pharmacy & pharmacology.

Only 11 universities from the pair make this last ranking, but it is telling that 6 are in the top-50 – perhaps a good signifier of the general performance of the two countries’ universities in these rankings.

The other continent to be majorly represented here is Asia. These rankings will not go down as the strongest performances by the continent’s universities though, with a mere 20 making the psychology ranking.

Containing 36 institutions, the pharmacy & pharmacology ranking will make the most pleasant reading for Asian universities, though it is hardly a headline figure – though the third place finish of the NUS certainly is!

NUS is Asia’s strongest performing university in all of these subjects, with the exception of biology, where the Universities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka (17, 18 and 22 respectively) outdo it.

This leads on smartly to the next point: if you want to study a life science subject in Asia, then Japan will offer you the most choice, with more universities represented than any other Asian nation in all four subjects.

There’s more to the continent than the world’s third biggest economy though, with Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and South Korea offering the quality you might expect, and Malaysian and Thai institutions making the pharmacy & pharmacology and medicine rankings respectively.

Up and coming nations

Only five Latin American universities make the biology rankings, but with seven apiece in the medicine and psychology rankings, and eight in the pharmacy & pharmacology, the performance of the region is certainly promising.

Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Argentina dominate, though Colombia is represented in the psychology ranking and Puerto Rico in pharmacy & pharmacology.

The latter ranking – clearly one of the most interesting – is also where Latin American universities finish highest, with Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad de Chile, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Universidade de São Paulo all finishing in the top-100.

Israel and South Africa are the only African and Middle Eastern countries represented. The latter can take some pride in the fact that the University of Cape Town finished higher in the biology ranking than any other university not featured in 2011’s table (51-100).

Russia’s sole representative is Lomonosov Moscow State University in the pharmacy and pharmacology table.