DDS, Dental Hygiene, Education, Faculty and Staff, Research, Students

Adams School of Dentistry Rated Number Two Globally

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Adams School of Dentistry maintained its rank as the number two dental school in the world in the 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) released by the Center for World Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.   

Other dental schools in the top five include the University of Michigan (ranked number one), King’s College London, Harvard University and the University of California San Francisco, in that order. 

The Adams School of Dentistry was not the only Carolina unit to receive high marks. The University overall ranked 29th in the world. Additionally, 10 other academic subject areas were ranked in the top 20 globally. Those include: 

  • seventh in nursing  
  • eighth in public health  
  • ninth in pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences  
  • ninth in statistics  
  • 10th in business administration  
  • 12th in education  
  • 15th in biological sciences  
  • 16th in biomedical engineering  
  • 17th in sociology  
  • 20th in computer science and engineering 

For the overall global rankings, ARWU evaluates universities based on objective indicators, including the number of 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. ARWU first published university rankings in 2003 and now ranks more than 2,000 universities each year. The top 1,000 universities are published annually.  

The scores are determined by the weighted indicators listed above, with the highest scoring university earning a score of 100. The other institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top score. 

For a full list of rankings and more information on the methodology, click here.