The start of a new academic year in Austria is just around the corner, although students in some other countries are already hard at work, studying, researching, discussing and taking exams. Many will have long since picked a subject, taken an admissions test and decided on the country, the city and the university they wish to attend, while others will still be making their choices and looking for tips.
Universities themselves have thus become a research subject as firms strive to provide budding academics with a few pointers. In amongst all the international university rankings there are also a few studies that go the extra mile and assess university towns and cities as a whole.
Since 2004, the higher education analytics company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has been publishing annual rankings based on university performance and polls of international students, and an Austrian city has made the top ten in this year’s Best Student Cities 2027 Ranking – Vienna! The Austrian capital had achieved 14th place in the 2025 rankings before moving up to 10th last year, and it has now risen a further step up the ladder. The victors’ podium has been occupied by the same three major cities for years now, although the precise order is in constant flux; this year’s rankings see Seoul taking the gold, Tokyo the silver and London the bronze.
The point of the “QS Best Student Cities” list is to identify the best cities for international students, and a city has to fulfil two criteria to qualify for the rankings: it must have a population of at least 250,000 (the greater metropolitan area is taken into account here) and it must contain at least two universities that are listed in the current “QS World University Rankings®”. Once these two hurdles have been cleared, the appraisal may begin.
So what criteria are assessed? The results are calculated from 23 indices, divided amongst the following six main categories:
- University ranking (how many of the city’s tertiary education institutions feature in the rankings, and in what place?)
- Make-up of student body (e.g. percentage of international students, proportion of students to general population, inclusion and tolerance)
- Quality of life (e.g. safety, air pollution, traffic, healthcare provision)
- Job prospects (e.g. youth employment, university graduates’ reputation in the workforce)
- Affordability (e.g. cost of living, tuition fees)
- The results of a student questionnaire (e.g. friendliness, sustainability, variety etc in the city, the number of people who stay on to live in the city after completing their studies.
Vienna scored particularly well for its excellent quality of life and the proportion of international students, and was rated very highly in the student survey. One thing that sets these rankings apart from many other international comparisons is that US universities do not feature at the top; the factors that set such institutions apart are their staff/student ratios and research results, but these are not counted in the QS rankings.
All told, an excellent report card. A good showing is determined by more than mere facts and figures, however; how the target audience perceives the city, how much they feel at home there and how they rate it personally are the key factors for both a place’s ranking as a student city and in undergraduates’ own student life and university career there.
