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Organizations Included

The 4icu.org directory includes worldwide higher education organisations which satisfy the following requirements:

• are officially recognized, licensed or accredited by national or regional bodies such as ministries of education and/or recognized higher education accrediting organizations.
• are officialy entitled to grant four-year undergraduate degrees and/or postgraduate degrees.
• provide traditional face-to-face learning facilities, programs and courses.

The 4icu.org directory currently does not include:

• two-year degree granting institutions such as Community Colleges, Vocational Colleges, Training Colleges etc.
• distance learning only organizations.
• other higher education organizations that do not satisfy the above requirements

To ensure the quality of the directory listing, 4icu.org does not participate in link exchanges or include affiliate resources within the directory.

Geographical Classification

We adopt the United Nations geographical classification as shown in the webpage "Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions" published by the United Nations Statistics Division.

For this reason countries like Turkey and Cyprus are included in the Asian geographical area even if, politically speaking, they might better fit under the European one.

4icu.Org University Web Ranking Methodology

Universities and Colleges are ranked by our exclusive 4icu.org University Web Ranking. The ranking has been published since May 2005. Since then the ranking methodology has been periodically fine-tuned in order to provide better results.

The current ranking is based upon an algorithm including four unbiased and independent web metrics extracted from three different search engines:

• Google Page Rank
• Alexa Global Rank
• Majestic Referring Subnets
• Majestic Trust Flow

Web metrics data are collected on the same week to minimize temporal fluctuations and maximize comparibility. A pre-computational filter is adopted to detect outliers in the raw data. Further investigation and a review of Alexa Traffic Rank data is carried out for universities adopting a subdomain (highly not recommended) as their official institutional home page.

Once outliers are detected and subdomains reviewed and adjusted, web metrics data are normalised to a scale of 0 to 100 taking into consideration the logarithmic nature in which both the Google Page Rank and the Alexa Traffic Rank are expressed. The four normalised values are aggregated based on a weighted average algorithm which generates the final score and web ranking.

The exact formula adopted to aggregate the three web metrics is not disclosed for copyright reasons and to minimise attempts of manipulation from university webmasters in order to achieve better rankings. The same philosophy is adopted by Google with regards to their search engine ranking algorithm. Being the 4icu.org University Web Ranking a non-academic ranking, the need for ranking methodology transparency and the ability of testing and reproducing the results, as suggested by the Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions, is less stringent than for academic rankings.

The aim of this website is to provide an approximate popularity ranking of world Universities and Colleges based upon the popularity of their websites. This is intended to help international students and academic staff to understand how popular a specific University/College is in a foreign country.

We do not claim - by any means - to rank organisations or their programs, by the quality of education or level of services provided. The 4icu.org University Web Ranking is not an academic ranking and should not be adopted as the main criteria for selecting a higher education organization where to study.

To add your 4icu.org University Web Ranking in your institutional website you can find some html code when clicking on the "share it" link under your University ranking.

Information Updates

Data and information are added or updated on a monthly basis. The 4icu.org University Web Ranking is updated every six months, in January and July. You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter to receive notifications on when the new rankings are published.

A special thanks goes to all Universities and Colleges that are participating in this project and help us maintain our database up-to-date.

How To Add A University

To submit a missing University please find the appropriate country page in the directory and click on the plus icon +

Please note that we only include accredited/recognised higher education organisations which offer at least some bachelor degrees and are not based mainly on a distance education system.