The Times Higher Education (THE) released the list of the best colleges in Asia in the Asia University Rankings 2018 on Tuesday, 6 February. While the top 10 spots were secured by universities from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, India managed to improve its score on the index with a total of 42 finding a place among just over 350 Universities.

Indian Institute of Science (IIS) in Bengaluru was the topmost Indian University in the list coming in at rank 29.

According to the THE, India’s representation in the list has gone up, the rankings of many Universities have gone down. There are 12 more universities in the list than last year.

“India, the third-most-represented country in the list, with 42 institutions, has also seen its average citation impact scores go up, although not as strongly as China. Improvements in its performance on metrics covering income, research productivity and PhD awards also contributed to its overall score rising,” wrote Simon Baker of THE.

Following IIS are five IITs. With 9,870 students, at rank 44 was the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, followed by IIT-Kharagpur at 60 with 11,016 students.

IIT-Roorkee, rank 65, IIT-Kanpur, rank 81, and IIT-Delhi, rank 86, were the others. At rank 100, Tezpur University in Assam was the last Indian university in the top 100 list.

IIT-Madras, rank 103, IIT-Guwahati, rank 112, Panjab University, rank 114, NIT-Rourkela, rank 126, Jadavpur University, rank 127, and University of Delhi, rank 144, were among the 42.

National University of Singapore topped the list. It was followed by Tsinghua University and Peking University (both China), University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (both Hong Kong), Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Tokyo, Seoul National University and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (both South Korea).

What is noteworthy is that many universities in the top 20 had a higher percentage of female students compared to male students. They also had a high number of foreign students.

THE attributes China’s rise to the increased citation impact of its scholarship. Citation impact has been cited as the reason behind the fall or lack of more places in the list.

THE is UK’s leading publication on higher education.