Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad

Just four Pakistani universities managed to make it to the top 1,000 of the 14th annual edition of the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings this year.

The rankings reflect a downgrade from last year's list, in which seven Pakistani institutes featured among the top 1,000 in the world.

Of the four institutes, only Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) is among the top 500 ? an improvement from its position in the 601-800 cohort in last year's rankings.

Other Pakistani universities to feature in the top 1,000 include COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in the 601-800 band, and the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad in the 801+ group.

In comparison to its neighbours, 60 universities from China, 30 from India and 11 from Iran appeared in the rankings.

University of Oxford topped the rankings, followed by the University of Cambridge in second place, and the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University sharing the third spot. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Princeton University, Imperial College London, University of Chicago, ETH Zurich and University of Pennsylvania rounded up the top 10.

The THE top 1,000 universities have all been assessed across THE?s balanced range of 13 separate performance metrics, covering the full range of a university?s core activities: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. They have all been evaluated by their academic peers through THE?s annual Academic Reputation Survey, which draws on more than 20,000 survey responses from senior scholars from more than 140 countries, according to the THE website.