Box Plot — Understanding Distribution & Spread
A box plot provides a powerful visual summary of how an institution performs relative to its Peer List across a specific QS indicator. It enables institutions to see at a glance how their performance compares to others — identifying strengths, weaknesses, and strategic focus areas.
What it shows:
Median (central line) – where 50% of values fall above and below.
Interquartile range (IQR) – the box encapsulates the middle 50% (25th–75th percentile).
Outliers (dots beyond whiskers): Highlight institutions that perform unusually high or low relative to peers.
Focus Institution (colored dot): Shows the selected university’s position on the percentile scale for that indicator.
Methodology & Indicators:
Box plots are available across a range of indicators in QS Rankings, including but not limited to:
Citations per Faculty (20% weight)
Employer Reputation (15%)
International Student Ratio (5%)
Faculty/Student Ratio (10%)
Sustainability and SDG Indicators — such as Environmental Impact, Equality, and Quality of Life
These plots reflect relative performance using percentile scores and are drawn from the underlying metrics available on the platform for each indicator across universities.
Example Use Cases:
Comparing median values of a single metric across regions or ranking segments (e.g., median Citations/Faculty for top-ranked vs mid-tier institutions).
A university improving Citations per Faculty consistently over 3 years may reflect successful research policy changes.
Divergence in Academic vs. Employer Reputation may indicate a reputational gap requiring targeted engagement with employers.
Institutions converging in Sustainability scores may signal a trend toward shared ESG benchmarks in the sector.
Spotting outliers, such as institutions with far higher Employer Reputation or Internationalisation scores.
Assessing variability, to check if a ranking indicator is tightly clustered or widely spread.
Example
In the image provided, the Focused Institution shows:
Outstanding performance (98.9th percentile) in Overall, Academic Reputation, and Sustainability.
Lagging performance (45.8th percentile) in Faculty Student ratio compared to its peer list.
By comparing these value, this allows institutional leaders celebrate and reinforce areas of strength such Academic Reputation and Sustanability. While identifying and addressing strategic improvement opportunities in Faculty Student ratio.