The University of the Philippines (UP) Manila, known as the country’s leading health sciences university, recently emerged as the Philippines’ top-ranked institution in two major international rankings, both underscoring its consistent strength in research performance.
Alongside its recognized strengths in scientific and medical research, UP Manila also pursues studies in artificial intelligence, data science, digital information ecosystems and personalized human-centered technologies. This growing multidisciplinary approach appears to be paying off on the global stage.
On June 2, the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) released its 2025 list of the top 2,000 universities worldwide out of 21,462 institutions, where UP Manila retained its position as the highest-ranked university in the Philippines.
The rankings are based on four key criteria: education (25%), employability (25%), faculty quality (10%) and research output (40%).
Garnering an overall score of 67.4, the university received a world rank of 1,677, employability rank of 1,047 globally while at 1,607th in research performance.
UP Manila earned a higher score than the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, which received 67 points and was the only other Philippine university to make it into the top 2,000. UPD is at 1,711 in research performance.
Meanwhile, in March, U.S. News & World Report released its 2024-2025 ranking of the top 500 Best Global Universities, where UP Manila placed 479th, the sole representative from the Philippines.
The rankings were based on 13 performance indicators evaluating academic research output and the institutions’ reputations on both global and regional scales.
With a global score of 54.8, the university achieved a global rank of number one in both normalized citation impact and percentage of highly cited papers among the top 1%, 76th in international collaboration, and 534th in international collaboration relative to country.
In terms of reputation in research, UP Manila placed 215th regionally and 1,000th globally. It also earned 137th place in the percentage of total publications among the top 10% most cited, and 902nd in the number of highly cited papers among the top 1% most cited.
Additional rankings include 1,285th in total citations, 1,654th in number of top 10% most cited publications, 1,772nd in books, 1,986th in conferences, and 2,242nd in overall publications.