QS World University Rankings 2025: Freie Universität Berlin Places Fourth among German Universities

The Rost- und Silberlaube Building at Freie Universität Berlin Image Credit: Ber
The Rost- und Silberlaube Building at Freie Universität Berlin Image Credit: Bernd Wannenmacher
According to this year’s QS World University Rankings, Freie Universität Berlin is among the top four universities in Germany. The rankings are published annually by higher education consulting firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Ltd. This year’s results, published on June 4, 2024, showed that Freie Universität Berlin placed ninety-seventh worldwide - one place higher than last year. The university’s high academic standing and its commitment to promoting networking within the international scientific community were two major factors in its success.

The German universities with the best global scores were the Technical University of Munich (rank twenty-eight), followed by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (rank fifty-nine) and Heidelberg University (rank eighty-four). RWTH Aachen (rank ninety-nine), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (rank one hundred and two), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (rank one hundred and twenty-six), Technische Universität Berlin (rank one hundred and forty-seven), Universität Hamburg (rank one hundred and ninety-one), and Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (rank two hundred and twelve) are also among the top ten universities in Germany.

The top three universities worldwide are Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Imperial College London, and the University of Oxford. On a European level, Freie Universität Berlin was ranked thirty-seventh.

The regional ranking uses a number of different performance metrics, including a university’s academic reputation, research output, the faculty to student ratio, graduate employability, the international faculty member ratio, the international student ratio, the extent of international networking (measured by joint citations with international partner universities), and sustainability.

The Latin words veritas, justitia, and libertas, which frame the seal of Freie Universität Berlin, stand for the values that have defined the academic ethos of Freie Universität since its founding in December 1948.