About Our Data
How we collect, verify, and maintain information on 25,000+ universities across 195 countries — transparently and with clear editorial standards.
Why We Publish Our Methodology
Choosing a university is one of the most consequential decisions a person can make — academically, financially, and personally. Students and families deserve to know where our data comes from, how current it is, what it does and doesn't include, and what role automation plays in generating it.
UniAtlas is an independent platform. We are not affiliated with any university, ranking organization, or government education authority. Our goal is to present the most accurate, useful, and contextualised information possible to help students make informed decisions — not to market institutions on their behalf.
Our Data Sources
We aggregate data from the following primary sources. For each data point displayed on a university profile, the source is either cited inline or available on request.
OpenAlex
↗ Official siteOpen scholarly infrastructure covering 250M+ research works. Provides research output metrics, citation counts, h-index, subject classifications, and institutional metadata for universities worldwide.
Coverage: Global — 200,000+ institutionsIPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System)
↗ Official siteMandatory reporting system for U.S. higher education institutions, administered by the National Center for Education Statistics. Provides enrollment, completions, finances, graduation rates, and financial aid data.
Coverage: United States — 6,000+ institutionsQS World University Rankings
↗ Official siteAnnual global university rankings published by Quacquarelli Symonds. Evaluates academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-to-student ratio, international faculty and student ratios, and research citations.
Coverage: Global — 1,500+ ranked institutionsTimes Higher Education (THE)
↗ Official siteAnnual world university rankings assessing teaching, research, citations, industry income, and international outlook across 1,900+ universities in 108 countries.
Coverage: Global — 1,900+ ranked institutionsARWU (Shanghai Rankings)
↗ Official siteAcademic Ranking of World Universities, the first global university ranking. Evaluates alumni and staff Nobel/Fields medals, highly-cited researchers, publications in Nature/Science, and publications indexed in major citation indices.
Coverage: Global — 500 ranked institutionsNAAC & NIRF
↗ Official siteNational Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) provide accreditation grades and rankings for Indian higher education institutions.
Coverage: India — 10,000+ institutionsOfficial University Submissions
Universities and accredited educational institutions can submit verified updates to their profile directly through our partnership programme. Submissions are reviewed by our editorial team before publication.
Coverage: Global — verified on requestOur Editorial Process
Raw data from sources is never published directly. Every data point goes through a multi-step quality process before appearing on a profile.
Automated ingestion
Data is imported from official sources via programmatic pipelines. Each import records the source, version, and timestamp so we can audit every data point.
Consistency checks
Automated validation flags obvious anomalies: enrollment numbers that changed by more than 50% year-on-year, acceptance rates outside 0–100%, or location data that doesn't match known geographies.
Human editorial review
Flagged records are reviewed by our editorial team. We cross-reference multiple sources and, where discrepancies exist, prefer the most recent official government or institutional source.
AI-assisted enrichment (disclosed)
For universities where source descriptions are minimal, we use AI language models to draft editorial summaries based on verified structured data. All AI-generated text is reviewed and edited by our team before publication. We never publish raw AI output without human oversight.
Annual refresh
Core metrics (rankings, enrollment, acceptance rates) are refreshed annually when new data is released by source organizations. Profiles are timestamped with the data vintage year.
AI-Generated Content Disclosure
Some university profiles include editorial summaries that were drafted with the assistance of AI language models (including Azure OpenAI GPT-4, DeepSeek, and other providers). We use AI as a productivity tool to scale the editorial process — not as a replacement for human judgement.
- All AI-generated text is reviewed and edited by a human before publication.
- AI outputs are never published verbatim. They serve as first drafts that editors refine.
- Factual claims in AI-drafted text are cross-checked against structured source data.
- Rankings, statistics, and numerical data are always sourced directly from official datasets — AI is never used to generate or infer numbers.
- If you believe a profile description is inaccurate, please contact us and we will review and correct it.
Data Limitations
We believe honest data is more useful than complete-looking data. Here is what we currently do not have, or have only partially:
- ✕Real-time acceptance rates — Acceptance rates are sourced from annual reports and may lag by 1–2 years. We display the data year where known.
- ✕Post-graduate employment outcomes — Employment data is available for some institutions (primarily U.S., UK, and Australia) but not globally.
- ✕Cost of living data — Tuition figures shown are published list prices; actual cost of attendance including housing, food, and transport is estimated and may not reflect current conditions.
- ~Non-English language institutions — Coverage for institutions that publish primarily in non-English languages (Arabic, Chinese, Russian, etc.) is less complete. We are actively improving this.
Report a Data Error
Found incorrect information on a university profile? We take data accuracy seriously and investigate every reported error. Verified corrections are typically applied within 5 business days.
Report an Error →Data Update Schedule
| Data type | Update frequency | Source |
|---|---|---|
| QS/THE/ARWU rankings | Annual (Q2–Q3 each year) | QS, THE, ARWU releases |
| Enrollment & graduation rates | Annual (upon IPEDS release) | IPEDS, government datasets |
| Acceptance rates | Annual | IPEDS, university disclosures |
| Research metrics & citations | Quarterly | OpenAlex |
| Scholarship data | Continuous (as new awards are posted) | Official scholarship programmes |
| University-submitted corrections | Within 5 business days of verification | University submissions |