QS ranking profile
Università della Svizzera Italiana
This page presents clearly labeled QS ranking data for orientation. It does not verify programs, supervisors, funding, admission requirements, or the university's website.
- QS 2026 rank
- #473
- Down 68 places since 2025
- QS 2025 rank
- #405
- Overall score
- 33.5
Explore opportunities at Università della Svizzera Italiana
Browse active research positions, doctoral fellowships, and university funding calls indexed from official faculties and verified sources.
QS indicators
Reported ranking indicators
Each indicator is scored out of 100 in the same QS snapshot as the summary above.
#701 worldwide
#701 worldwide
#227 worldwide
#434 worldwide
#33 worldwide
#10 worldwide
#5 worldwide
#801 worldwide
#801 worldwide
#751 worldwide
Institution profile
How QS classifies this institution
QS groups institutions by size, subject range, and research output.
- Size
- Small
- Fewer than 5,000 students
- Subject range
- Full comprehensive
- All main faculty areas, including a medical school
- Research intensity
- Very high
- Very high research output in the QS classification
- Region
- Europe
- QS regional grouping
University profile
About Università della Svizzera Italiana
Editorial background written for orientation. Verify programs, funding, and admission on the university's official pages.
USI's faculty map gives architecture, biomedicine, informatics, and society distinct public routes
Università della Svizzera italiana, usually called USI, presents a faculty structure that includes the Academy of Architecture, Biomedical Sciences, Communication, Culture and Society, Economics, and Informatics, alongside an affiliated Faculty of Theology in Lugano. The range is valuable because it resists a single, vague picture of the university. A question about a building, a metabolic process, a statistical model, a digital system, a media practice, an economic institution, or a philosophical argument belongs in a different local conversation. The faculty map is a way to locate that conversation, not a substitute for a close research record.
USI's public calendar makes the differences visible in practice. It includes events on immune targets for malaria vaccines, Bayesian model selection, high-performance computing and data analytics, social-science methods, energy law, and philosophical debate. An event title can provide accurate vocabulary for a search, but it does not prove the scope of every project, group, or laboratory connected with the topic. The most reliable use of the calendar is to identify a subject that merits a closer check through the relevant faculty, institute, researcher, or output page.
Doctoral fields at Università della Svizzera italiana show where broad interests start to separate
USI's doctoral-study page lists routes in architecture, biomedical sciences, computational science, communication sciences, economics, humanities, informatics, Italian language, literature and civilisation, philosophy, religious studies, and technical sciences. The list is a useful organisational map, especially for questions that sit between common labels. Computational science and informatics are not interchangeable with a biomedical question that uses data. Communication sciences and humanities may share texts or audiences without asking the same question. A doctoral title establishes a public academic route, while the detailed object of inquiry still has to be verified closer to the relevant setting.
The university also identifies medical and theology-related advanced study routes beside its doctoral programme list. These categories should be read with the same care. They show that different forms of academic work are publicly organised at USI, but they do not demonstrate a particular supervisor relationship, research method, or resource. A reader comparing a health, data, communication, or humanities question should look for the record that makes the object, material, and local setting explicit. A general programme label can guide the search, but it cannot carry the final conclusion by itself.
At USI, a useful research trail joins a focused question to the closest faculty or programme record
The strongest USI search starts with the thing that needs explanation rather than a fashionable subject label. It might concern a vaccine-related immune response, a software-performance trade-off, a model-selection problem, a media practice, a legal question about energy, or a philosophical disagreement. Next, describe the evidence that would matter: biological samples, clinical or experimental observations, datasets, code, mathematical models, media material, legal documents, interviews, or texts. This makes the faculty and doctoral routes easier to use because each route can be tested against the same concrete question.
USI's official pages establish a multi-field academic map and a visible set of programme and event routes. They cannot establish that every faculty pursues a named topic, that an individual is available for a future project, or that a broad title represents one settled method. When a local record describes the object and its research context together, a profile can state that limited connection with confidence. When only an umbrella category is visible, it is better to preserve the unanswered point and continue to a more specific public page.