Two universities in Hunan Province, namely, Hunan University and Central South University, are on the ranking list. Hunan University, together with other eight Chinese top universities, including China University of Geosciences, and University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, make their first appearance in the Top 500.

Totally 41 universities in Chinese mainland broke into the ranking, among which Tsinghua University and Peking University make their first appearance in the Top 100.

Starting from 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world Top 500 universities annually based on transparent methodology and third-party data. ARWU has been recognized as the precursor of global university rankings and the most trustworthy league table. ARWU adopts six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of Highly Cited Researchers, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance. More than 1200 universities are actually ranked by ARWU every year and the best 500 universities are published.

Shanghai Ranking Consultancy is a fully independent organization dedicating to research on higher education intelligence and consultation. It has been the official publisher of the Academic Ranking of World Universities since 2009.