Also a big tourist destination, come springtime.
Also a big tourist destination, come springtime. ASK

Forty-five departments at our state's flagship university rise to the level of international renown, according to the Center for World University Rankings.

"The highest-scoring UW program was social work, which was ranked number 1 in the world," The Seattle Times reports. "Oceanography and audiology & speech language pathology were ranked second worldwide, and biomedical research methods, medical informatics, microbiology and virology were all ranked third."

To create their list, the CWUR "measures the quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research without relying on surveys and university data submissions."

From their website:

CWUR uses eight objective and robust indicators to rank the world's top 1,000 universities:

1) Quality of Education, measured by the number of a university's alumni who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals relative to the university's size [25%]
2) Alumni Employment, measured by the number of a university's alumni who have held CEO positions at the world's top companies relative to the university's size [25%]
3) Quality of Faculty, measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals [25%]
4) Publications, measured by the number of research papers appearing in reputable journals [5%]
5) Influence, measured by the number of research papers appearing in highly-influential journals [5%]
6) Citations, measured by the number of highly-cited research papers [5%]
7) Broad Impact, measured by the university's h-index [5%]
8) Patents, measured by the number of international patent filings [5%]

Check out the full list of UW's best-ranked subjects here.