The Hardman Rankings

← World University Rankings 2026

Royal Holloway, University of London

United KingdomROR 04g2vpn86
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World University Rankings 2026 · 90% range 706–1848 of 2,287 · score 32.5
Research Index: not ranked

How it scores

Research
58
Alumni outcomes
76
Admissions & earnings
66/91

Research and Alumni outcomes are percentiles among 2,287 universities; alumni outcomes are counted per student. Admissions & earnings is the position among universities in the same country (United Kingdom).

Note: It has 1,344 core papers, below the Research Index threshold of 1,500, so its citation shares are shrunk toward the median of similarly small universities before scoring.

Admissions, outcomes and alumni

Offer rate (UK 18-year-olds, UCAS)
94.3% src
Offer holders who enrol
14% src
Median earnings 5 years after graduating (LEO)
£33,200 src
Internationally notable alumni (Wikidata)
15 src
Heads of state or government (Wikidata)
0 src
Founders, billionaires and $30M+ alumni
not on the published top lists; estimated
Students (undergraduate / total)
10,935 / 13,115 src

Each figure links to its source. Admissions and earnings figures are comparable only within a country.

Research Index

The Research Index ranks a university only when it has at least 1,500 fractionally counted core publications over four years, so that a handful of highly cited papers can’t produce an extreme score. Its field ranks (where it has 200 or more papers in a field) and all of its data are shown here.

The numbers behind it (2020–2023)

Papers in the top 10% of their field
11.8% (10.5%–13.2%)
Papers in the top 1% of their field
1.2% (0.8%–1.7%)
Top-10% papers (fractional count)
159
All papers (fractional count)
1,344.4
International co-authored
64.4%
Open access
78.3%
Papers from 2020–23 since retracted
1 (0.23 per 1,000)

Core publications, fractional counting, field-normalised citation shares. Brackets show Leiden’s stability interval. Collaboration and open-access shares use full counting and aren’t field-normalised. Retraction counts come from the Retraction Watch database and include publishers’ mass retractions as well as honest-error retractions; a retraction is not by itself evidence of misconduct, and the count is never scored.

By field

Biomedical & health sciences–fewer than 200 papers
Life & earth sciences=650range 463–814 of 1,092
Mathematics & computer science=939range 710–1137 of 1,391
Physical sciences & engineering–fewer than 200 papers
Social sciences & humanities=280range 169–458 of 1,262

Position over time

Not enough periods to show a trend.

The same method applied to each 4-year publication window. The number of ranked universities grows from period to period, so position is shown as a share of the field.

How other rankings place it

–Research Index 2026 (not ranked)
–QS 2027 (not in top 100)
–THE 2027 (not in top 100)
–ARWU 2026 (not in top 100)

Other rankings are cited for comparison. The Research Index measures research only; QS and THE also use reputation surveys and figures universities submit, and ARWU counts prize winners and total output.

Prize winners

No Nobel, Fields, Turing or Abel laureates linked to this university in Wikidata.