The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) is the first global university ranking with multifarious indicators. It is published and copyrighted annually by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, an independent organization focusing on higher education.

Ton Duc Thang is in 901-1000th place in the list that was released Thursday.

Established as a private school in 1997 by the Ho Chi Minh City Federation of Labor, Ton Duc Thang became a public school in 2008 after being taken over by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor.

It has two campuses in HCMC.

The top three in this year’s ARWU remain unchanged from last year: the U.S.’s Harvard University and Stanford followed by the University of Cambridge in Britain.

ARWU is considered one of the world’s most prestigious university rankings along with the QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education.

It comes up with the final list by analyzing four factors: education quality (10 percent), faculty quality (40 percent), scientific research (40 percent), and average academic productivity per capita (10 percent).

For academic or research performance, it looks at alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution.

Ton Duc Thang had also been the lone Vietnamese university in the Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings 2019 issued in April for achievements related to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

Last December it had been named by the UI GreenMetric World University Ranking among the 300 most sustainable universities in the world. It was ranked 182nd while Tra Vinh University, another Vietnamese school in the southern province of the same name, was ranked 256th.