Three Korean medical schools were named in the top 100 world-class medical schools. At home, Yonsei University College of Medicine has risen to first place, beating Seoul National University College of Medicine.

Times Higher Education (THE), a British university rating institution, announced the 2023 World University Rankings on Thursday. Yonsei University College of Medicine took the highest place in the clinical health sector in Korea. The rankings included 25 Korean medical schools out of a total of 40.

Yonsei ranked at 32nd place, up 20 notches from 52nd in 2022, placing itself within the top 50 medical schools. The medical school received high marks in research results and educational environment by ranking 12th in the world.

The SNU College of Medicine ranked 41st, down from 37th last year, giving the title of Korea’s top medical school to Yonsei University. SNU ranked higher 56th place in the overall evaluation, higher than Yonsei’s 78th, but received a lower assessment in terms of medical school.

Sung Kyun Kwan University College of Medicine, which rose to 46th place worldwide last year, fell back to 82nd this year, taking third place in Korea.

Korea University College of Medicine was ranked in the 151-175 group to take the fourth highest spot in Korea, followed by Kyung Hee University College of Medicine (251-300), Ajou University College of Medicine (300-400), Ulsan University College of Medicine (401-500), and Hanyang University College of Medicine (501-600).

"It is the result of preparing and operating various programs to foster the next generation of doctor-scientists and educators,” said Lee Eun-jik, dean of the Yonsei University College of Medicine. “To achieve results in various fields, such as precision medicine, artificial intelligence, and big data, we will not stay within the medical school campus but collaborate with outside professional groups to continue to produce good results."

In the recent evaluation of 1,001 universities worldwide, the United Kingdom University of Oxford took the world’s No. 1 medical school title. The university has been at the top of the medical school list for 12 years.

The others with top-10 medical schools were the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, Imperial College London, Tsinghua University, Stanford University, University of Toronto, University College London, Yale University, and King’s College London.

Tsinghua University, which became the only Asian university in the top-10 list, ranked at 32nd place in 2021, and seventh place in 2022.

Times Higher Education, established in 1971, is regarded as one of the world’s most authoritative university-rating institutions and has announced rankings every year since 2004. It has five evaluation indexes – research result (27.5 percent), educational environment (27.5 percent), citation of theses (35 percent), internationalization (7.5 percent), and earnings from industry-university cooperation.