Los Angeles

QS Best Student Cities ranking: 25^th

Rising by no less than 10 spaces in the QS Best Student Cities ranking this year, helped by the incredible 32-place leap in the student view indicator, Los Angeles is undoubtedly somewhere students want to be. Home to three universities ranked within the world’s top 150, Los Angeles achieves particularly strong scores in the desirability and employer activity indicators of the QS Best Student Cities ranking. The latter reflects the views of local and international employers, who clearly view the city as a key hub from which to recruit bright new talents – the employer activity indicator has had a six-point rise in 2019 to reach 19^th overall. Certainly it’s no surprise to find that graduates of the world-renowned University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),  California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and other top ranked universities in the city are in high demand.

Home to the Hollywood film industry and absolutely packed with galleries, museums, theaters and all kinds of performance venues, LA is often touted as the ‘Creative Capital of the World’. In addition to its large comprehensive state universities, the city also has numerous private universities and colleges, many specializing in fields relating to the creative arts.

Whatever your field of interest, LA is likely to have a strong offering – whether it’s business, science, fashion, medicine, sports or technology. It is, after all, the second-largest metropolitan area in the US (after New York). And the southern Californian climate is an added bonus, with sunshine guaranteed pretty much year-round, probably helping it to earn a strong score for Desirability!

Los Angeles is highly rated by many students, with one survey respondent commenting in our student survey: “It is perfectly located, near beaches, mountains, forests. It has the charms of a big city and the size of a sprawling suburb. There is a lot to do here. The weather is great.”

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Internationally ranked universities in Los Angeles

More about Los Angeles

To find out how each of the above categories is calculated, view the methodology.