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Top 10 Places to Study Abroad 2022 - Rankings Rationale

Curious on how we came up with Top 10 Rankings to Study Abroad? Here we breakdown the list of important factors that we use as the framework for our rankings.

Jul 30, 2024
Student looking at the skies

At educations.com, our mission is to help everyone in the world find the right education. We know that international students have special considerations when choosing an ideal university and program, and our Top 10 Places to Study Abroad rankings are a major step towards helping them find their ideal study abroad destination!

In August 2021, we conducted a survey of over 10,000 students from around the world and asked about their top reasons for studying abroad. This resulted in the list of factors they considered most important which was then used as the framework for our rankings.

This is the fourth ranking of this kind, and to compare how the importance of the seven factors has changed since last year, check the 2021 rankings and rationale page.

These seven factors are:

  1. To access higher-quality teaching
  2. To achieve my career goals
  3. To develop myself personally
  4. To experience a new culture or lifestyle
  5. To make new friends or for professional networking
  6. To learn a new language
  7. To have an adventure

We then assigned the factors their corresponding quantitative metric (or weight) according to how many students selected that factor as important in their decision-making process. For example, 17.25% of students surveyed said it was important to experience a new culture or lifestyle. Hence, the 'to experience a new culture or lifestyle' factor makes up 17.25% of each country's overall score.

Each factor's score is made up of sub-scores based on a selection of external data sources (listed below). Each of these sub-scores was averaged out and added together to create a final score for that factor.

From there, the factors were weighted and added together to create a final score for each country. The top 10 places for each list are the countries with the highest final score.

View 2022 rankings by region

Top 10 Global ranking 2022 badge
Top 10 Europe ranking 2022 badge
Top 10 Asia ranking 2022 badge

Data sources and score weighting

1. To access higher-quality teaching

2. To achieve career goals

3. To develop myself personally

4. To experience a new culture or lifestyle

5. To make new friends or for professional networking

6. To learn a new language

7. To have an adventure

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Keystone Team

Author

The Keystone Team is comprised of experienced educators and advisors dedicated to providing valuable resources and advice to students all over the world.