QS ranking profile
University of Colorado Boulder
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
- #299
- Up 21 places since 2025
- QS 2025 rank
- #320
- Overall score
- 45.6
Explore opportunities at University of Colorado Boulder
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.
#232 worldwide
#386 worldwide
#359 worldwide
#516 worldwide
#510 worldwide
#801 worldwide
#801 worldwide
#242 worldwide
#354 worldwide
#61 worldwide
Institution profile
How QS classifies this institution
QS groups institutions by size, subject range, and research output.
- Size
- Extra large
- More than 30,000 students
- Subject range
- Comprehensive
- Teaches across all main faculty areas
- Research intensity
- Very high
- Very high research output in the QS classification
- Region
- Americas
- QS regional grouping
University profile
About University of Colorado Boulder
Editorial background written for orientation. Verify programs, funding, and admission on the university's official pages.
Colorado Boulder groups research around clear public questions
University of Colorado Boulder presents research through several public areas, including space, health and biosciences, environment, and quantum. This is a helpful first map because each area connects a broad field with visible questions. The site discusses work on water, infectious disease, chronic pain, planetary defence, and quantum technology. Those examples are not a full catalogue of every research group. Their value is to show where a reader can begin asking a more specific question: which laboratory, school, or researcher is working on the exact system, material, or mechanism that matters to the topic under consideration?
The space material describes research that uses instruments and observations to study Earth, space weather, and related systems. The environmental material connects environmental and data science with questions such as wildfire risk and water. These examples make an important point about research labels. Space and environment are not single methods. They can involve instrumentation, modelling, remote observation, data analysis, or other approaches. A comparison should therefore identify the method and research object together, rather than treating a large public theme as sufficient evidence of a close academic match.
Health, environment, and quantum pages answer different questions
CU Boulder describes health and bioscience work through causes of disease, chronic pain, medical devices, materials, and treatments. Its quantum material discusses sensing, timekeeping, imaging, space travel, and data protection. These are distinct problem spaces even when they share technical vocabulary. A materials question may be connected with a medical device, an aerospace system, or a quantum instrument in different ways. A sensible next step is to find the local page that specifies the research context. That page should clarify whether the work is experimental, computational, clinical, physical, or another kind of inquiry.
News and feature pages can reveal current terminology, recent studies, and named research settings. They should be handled as pointers, not as a complete description of an academic environment. Trace a relevant feature back to the laboratory, centre, department, or team that produced it. Then make a note of what the source actually shows. This protects against a common error in university research: assuming that a well-described public result represents all work in a broader field. The local evidence should carry the main weight in the comparison.
Turn a CU Boulder theme into a testable research question
A practical University of Colorado Boulder comparison starts by choosing one of the visible research questions and making it narrower. For example, a climate question might concern a measurement problem, a model of risk, or an environmental system. A health question might concern a mechanism, a material, or a device. Search for the local unit that gives this narrow question an academic home and read enough current material to identify the approach. A convincing connection can then be described in plain terms without claiming that an entire theme determines the work of every group.
Keep a short evidence trail with three parts: the local unit, the stated research object, and the method or perspective that overlaps with your own direction. If one part is not visible, mark the connection as incomplete. This is more useful than filling the gap with an assumption based on the central research page. It also makes it possible to compare CU Boulder with another university using the same standard, because each entry is tied to what a particular research setting publicly communicates rather than to a broad institutional impression.