VNU is ranked 1059th among the best universities in the world in terms of academics by US News & World Report (USA) in 2020.

Vietnam has two universities ranked for the first time in this ranking, namely VNU-Hanoi ranked 1059, number 1 in Vietnam, followed by VNU-HCM ranked 1176. In addition, US News & World Report magazine said that Vietnam also has Ton Duc Thang University which is also evaluated but has no ranking.

Source:US News

Notably, also in this ranking, the Physics department of VNU has increased 30 places compared to last year's ranking of 502, this year it is 472 in the world.

Ranked by Asia region, VNU-Hanoi is ranked 275th and VNU-HCM is ranked 322nd; in the region, University of Malaya (Malaysia) is ranked 27th, Chulalongkorn University and Mahidol University (Thailand) are both ranked 81st...

In the region, National University of Singapore ranked first in Asia, Tsinghua University (China) ranked second, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) ranked third, King Abdulaziz University (Saudi Arabia) ranked fourth, Peking University (China) ranked fifth...

This is the sixth time that US News & World Report has published the rankings of this Ranking. Previously, for more than 30 years, US News & World Report focused on ranking US colleges and universities. However, recently, the demand of students in the US has expanded beyond domestic universities; at the same time, helping US universities to be able to compare with other universities around the world, US News & World Report has published the Best Global Universities Ranking.

This year, 1,599 universities from 81 countries were included in the assessment, of which 1,500 were ranked. Best Global Universities evaluates and ranks universities based on scientific database analysis provided by Clarivate Analytics InCites Group. Thus, with a ranking of 1059, it can be said that VNU is in the top 1000+ leading research universities in the world.

In terms of ranking methods, Best Global Universities evaluates universities using 13 criteria (Table below) that are completely objective and focus on research reputation (through surveys) and research quality through analysis of scientific data published in the Clarivate Analytics InCites database. In which, only universities with 1,500 articles published between 2013 and 2017 are considered; at the same time, research reputation is conducted by Clarivate Analytics InCites. Scholars participating in the research reputation assessment are authors selected from the Web of Science database, including Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI).

Evaluation and ranking criteria

On September 11, 2019, Times Higher Education (THE) announced the latest World University Rankings 2020 at the THE Academic Summit held in Zurich (Switzerland). Accordingly, for the first time, Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU) and 02 Vietnamese universities were ranked by THE along with nearly 1,400 leading universities in the world. Of which, VNU and Hanoi University of Science and Technology are in the 801-1000 group in the world; followed by Ho Chi Minh City National University in the 1000+ group.

In the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2019, VNU has 3 groups of subjects in the fields of Physics and Astronomy, Computer Science and Information Systems, Mechanical Engineering, Aeronautics and Manufacturing ranked, in which the Mechanical Engineering, Aeronautics and Manufacturing group is in the 451-500 group.

Thus, VNU is present in most of the world's important rankings of higher education.