At EAIE 2026 in Glasgow, Scotland, EDUopinions announced the 20 winners of the second annual Reputation Barometer Awards. Each of these institutions was awarded the title Outstanding Institutions: Rated by Students, thanks to their overwhelmingly positive reviews on third-party reviews websites.
While many of these 20 institutions also regularly appear in traditional league tables, ranked by factors including research output, employer reputation, and number of international students, the Reputation Barometer Awards are entirely decided by how students speak about their institution online.
The Winners of the Reputation Barometer Awards 2026
For the inaugural Reputation Barometer Awards in 2025, we highlighted the top six institutions according to online student reviews on EDUopinions, Reddit, Quora, and Google.
This year, we’ve expanded the ranking to the top 20 global universities with the most positive online sentiment. Our ranking includes data from online reviews published from August 2025 to August 2026.
The winners of the Reputation Barometer Awards 2026, named Outstanding Institutions: Rated by Students, are:
- Aalto University
- University of St Andrews
- University of Bristol
- University of British Columbia
- EHL Hospitality Business School
- KdG University of Applied Sciences and Arts
- Koc University
- University of Loughborough
- McGill University
- North-West University
- Odisee University of Applied Sciences
- University of Ostrava
- Rhodes University
- South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences – XAMK
- Stellenbosch University
- USTP – University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten
- University of Tartu
- University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
- Vilnius University
- Vita-Salute San Raffaele University
What are the Reputation Barometer Awards?
The EDUopinions Reputation Barometer analyses reviews sentiment across the web, providing institutions with a highly influential evaluation of their digital reputation based on feedback from their most important stakeholders: students.
To evaluate an institution’s digital reputation, we built an in-house AI model to analyse student discussions on four prominent social review websites:
- Quora
- EDUopinions
By including both formal review platforms (Google/EDUopinions) and informal ones (Reddit/Quora), we ensure that our sentiment analysis reflected the diverse experiences of students.
We evaluate discussions across eight categories: facilities, professors, location, student life, internationality, value, accommodation, and career prospects.
The resulting sentiment analysis is categorised as either negative, neutral, or positive, and given a percentage score.
By comparing the ratio of positive to negative sentiment, we can see which institutions are well-regarded by students, based on current online discussion.
Schools also receive a percentage score for each of the eight indicators, offering further insights into areas of strength and weakness.
Do I need reviews on EDuopinions to appear in the Reputation Barometer Awards?
Our sentiment analysis can still provide relevant results without available EDUopinions student reviews. The scores we provide are aggregated based on the three other sources (Google, Quora, Reddit), which, combined, offer insights from tens of thousands of students.
Does the Reputation Barometer only consider star ratings from EDUopinions reviews?
Our AI model evaluates the sentiment of each written review on our site, not the star ratings provided. In this way, it offers a more accurate picture of how students feel about your university, without the subjective influence of star ratings.
In some cases, as shown in the image below, a student may rate their institution five stars, but in their written comments, they may mention some negative aspects of their experience. Our sentiment analysis ensures that we gather the whole, unique experience of each student to evaluate the university’s reputation.
Get your Reputation Barometer Score now
Find out how students rate your university in real-time with the EDUopinions Reputation Barometer.
Data from the Reputation Barometer can be used alongside other internal and external quality indicators (for example, you may review traditional rankings, in-class student feedback, or alumni surveys) to give you a comprehensive view of how well your institution is catering to your most valued stakeholder: students themselves.
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