The University of Costa Rica (UCR) climbed 30 spots in the “QS World University Rankings” for the 2016-2017 period. The QS World University Rankings provides an index of the world’s leading higher education institutions, based on six performance indicators: Academic reputation, Employer reputation, Student-to-faculty ratio, Citations per faculty, International faculty ratio and international student ratio; In this way the ranking evaluates performance in four areas: research, teaching, employability and internationalization, each indicator carries a different weighting when calculating overall scores; in this last edition the ranking was expanded to feature 916 universities (25 more than in the previous year) in 81 countries, following assessment of more than 3,800 institutions. The academic institution was ranked in the previous edition in the range 501-510 and this year it appears in the range 471-480, within the best 500 universities in the world. When it comes to the QS World University Rankings by subject, the University of Costa Rica got its best scoring in Agriculture & Foresty earning a position in the range 201-250. Within the Latin America University Rankings, the UCR holds position 18; in these region the best ranked was the Buenos Aires University (Argentina) which is in position 85 of the global ranking, being the only Latin America University to make the top 100. Brazil’s Sao Paulo University (120), Mexico’s UNAM (128), Chile’s UC (147), Brazil’s Unicamp (191) and the University of Chile (200), are all within the best 200 universities in the world. The top spot was earned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for fifth consecutive year, followed by Stanford University which climbed one place, Harvard University is in the third position while it used to lead the ranking from 2004-2009, the University of Cambridge is holding the fourth place and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) completes the top 5. The University of Oxford, University College London, the Swiss Federal