When personnel managers in high tech companies recruit young and highly qualified engineers and scientists they base their choice on their personal impressions but also to a large extent on university diplomas presented by applicants during the selection process. Doing so personnel managers often consult the university ranking by the Shanghai Jiao Tong university. This ranking is said to be the most independent and professional ranking worldwide. The ranking for the year 2008 has just been published. At the top of the few German universities which made it into the top 100 are the two elite universities in Munich.
Once more this year the universities on the winners´ rostrum are Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley. The two Munich-based universities, however, are clearly leading the German elite. Only six German universities made it into the top 100. Besides the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (ranking 55th) and the Technical University Munich (ranking 57th) there are the universities of Heidelberg (67), Göttingen (90), Freiburg (96) and Bonn (97) among the top 100.
Among the European competitors the two Munich universities came 14th and 15th. The leading universities in Europe are Cambridge (ranking 4th globally) and Oxford (ranking 10th globally).
The Shanghai ranking is based on a scoring system which takes into account the number of Nobel laureates generated by a certain university and top scientists frequently quoted as well as the number of publications in internationally renowned expert magazines and the so-called research efficiency per scientist of a given university. 