San Francisco

QS Best Student Cities ranking: Joint 35^th

Adjacent to California's famed tech innovation hub Silicon Valley and rising three places in the QS Best Student Cities ranking this year, San Francisco is within striking distance of two of the world's most prestigious universities, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, currently ranked 2^nd and 28^th respectively in the QS World University Rankings® 2020.

Made famous in the 1960s as the home of “flower power”, San Francisco remains one of the United States' most iconic and frequently visited cities. With its famously laid-back coastal lifestyle and sunny climate, it’s known for its high quality of life, without the expensive living costs associated with cities like New York (though of course university fees are still as high as you’d expect from top US universities).

Today, the city’s bohemian heritage and relaxed beach style blend with more cutting-edge and competitive dynamics. One of the world's leading 10 financial centers, the San Francisco Bay Area is home to hundreds of innovative companies, particularly in the technology sector, including the likes of Apple, Facebook and IBM, adding to its attraction for ambitious students and graduates.

As a result, this (as well as its high caliber of institutions) means that San Francisco scores highly in the employer activity indicator, rising four places this year to rank 11^th worldwide. This indicator is based on surveys of local and international employers, who are asked to identify the cities they perceive as producing the most talented and employable graduates.

Students in the 2019 student survey, when asked what they liked most about the city, said that the city is “energetic” and “amazingly diverse”.

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Internationally ranked universities in San Francisco

More about San Francisco

To find out how each of the above categories is calculated, view the methodology.