The Global Student Satisfaction Awards recognize and celebrate outstanding universities based on student reviews and feedback. We empower students to review their schools so that other students worldwide can make informed decisions and will find it easier to discover the international degree that fits them best.
At Studyportals, our primary mission is to empower the world to choose education. We achieve this by providing quality information to our users — future international students — who want to find the perfect study programme abroad.
How students can review universities on our portals
We always challenged ourselves to provide useful and accurate information, and we were surprised to realise that student input in university rankings was not getting enough attention.
This is why, in 2018, we implemented university reviews on our platform. The goal was to offer students a voice and allow them to express their opinions about the higher education institutions that they graduated or will graduate from. We only included the most recent student reviews from graduates who finished their studies after January 1st, 2016.
In a world where most university rankings are created by independent organisations like Times Higher Education, TopUniversities, or U.S. News, we've felt it is important that students also have something to say about the quality and rating of educational institutions.
It's important to know that you too can review your university!
How do we make sure we get the best university reviews
Throughout the last years, we’ve managed to crowdsource around 195,000 student reviews. These were collected with the help of our partners, such as:
- ESN (Erasmus Student Network)
- ESTIEM (European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management)
- EDUopinions
To prevent false reviews and fraudulent behaviour, we use validation systems (e.g. manual checks, email checks, contacting the reviewer). Studyportals also verifies the reviews collected by universities.
If we cannot determine that an email account is valid, we reserve the right not to take that review into consideration.
Main categories for the student reviews
There are eight criteria used for reviewing each university. Ratings can be given from 1 to 5, and no distinction is made between local and international students. The only exception is category 3 (Life quality of students), where reviews collected through ESN are not considered due to the high chance of them coming from exchange students, who do not usually experience a regular admission process.
Let’s learn a bit more about each of the eight categories:
1. Overall satisfaction
In this category, we asked students to mark their overall student experience at the university. This included courses, admission, personal development and other aspects.
2. Student-teacher interaction
Students had to rate their teachers and how open and engaged they were in terms of communication, feedback, and support, both during and after classes.
3. Quality of student life
We asked students to rate the overall lifestyle they had, based on their expectations and how well the city in which they lived managed to fulfil or exceed them.
4. Career development
Modern universities should help students develop not only academically but also personally and professionally. We asked students if they received support for their career development, which can come in the form of extracurricular courses, workshops, or internships related to their field of study.
5. Student diversity
In this section, universities were ranked based on their openness towards different cultures, religions, nationalities, and specific needs.
6. Admission process
Studyportals asked students to think about how difficult the admission process was, if they had enough information before applying, and what was the quality of the support received from the university staff.
7. Online classroom experience
In this section, students rate how well the university was able to adapt to teach using online environments. This includes the use of the online format, the taught content, class interaction and the overall quality of the classes.
The 2023 Global Student Satisfaction Awards
We will use the reviews we collected to organise the Global Student Satisfaction Awards in October 2023. The main objective of this initiative is to:
- Give students around the world a voice and allow them to rank and select the best educational institutions.
- Help future students choose a university abroad based on the reviews of recent graduates or students currently enrolled at that university.
- Inspire universities to participate and encourage their students to share the information and contribute to the transparency of study options and the quality of education worldwide.
How we select the nominees for the 2023 awards
For the Global Student Satisfaction Awards, we allow each university to only be nominated for an award in one of the 7 categories mentioned above. The category in which a university receives the highest score is chosen as the most representative for that institution. This is done to encourage diversity and a better representation of the diverse interests of students.
Only universities with English-taught programmes hosted on Studyportals’ websites can participate, as this is the only way to map reviews to organisations. Universities also need at least 10 reviews to participate. We’ve made an exception for the first category (overall satisfaction), where the minimum is 30 reviews because the sample size of the rating is much larger.
For each of the 8 categories, there are 3 regional finalists from The Americas, EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), and APAC (Asia-Pacific). A global winner is chosen out of all of them.
All universities receive medals in each category if they receive an average rating of at least 4.0. These medals will also be displayed on our portals and on the university’s page.
Which are the 2023 finalists
Global Student Satisfaction Awards 2023 took place online on October 18th, 2023. There were 21 finalist universities.
Overall satisfaction finalists:
- University of Navarra, Spain
- Cleveland State University (CSU), United States
- Yokohama National University, Japan
Student diversity finalists:
- University of Klagenfurt, Austria
- University of West Florida, United States
- Prince of Songkla University, Thailand
Online classroom experience finalists:
- Kühne Logistics University, Germany
- University Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
- University of the People, United States
Admission process finalists
- University West, Sweden
- Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico
- Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Quality of student life finalists
- San Diego State University, United States
- Semmelweis University, Hungary
- Siam University, Thailand
Career development finalists
- Dublin City University, Ireland
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States
- Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Student-teacher interaction finalists
- University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, Czech Republic
- MARA Technological University, Malaysia
- Denison University, United States
Based on the reviews of thousands of students, we awarded prizes to the best universities in the world.
And the 2023 Global Student Satisfaction Awards grand winners are:
- For overall satisfaction: University of Navarra, Spain
- For student diversity category: University of Klagenfurt, Austria
- For online classroom experience: University of the People, United States
- For the admission process: University West, Sweden
- For Quality of student life: Semmelweis University, Hungary
- For career development: Dublin City University, Ireland
- For student-teacher interaction: Denison University, United States
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Leave your review, and make a difference!
Now you know what the Global Student Satisfaction Awards are all about. Are you ready to share your review and help prospective international students make a better choice? Don’t hesitate to share your review now.
Let’s make education more transparent for students all around the world!