The Russian rating agency RAEX has published the new results of its subject-specific rankings of domestic higher education institutions. In 2026, Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University entered the top 5 across four distinct categories: first place in "Petroleum Engineering," third in "Land Transport Engineering and Technologies," and fifth in both "Ecology" and "Chemical Engineering."
The university also secured positions in the top ten for "Power Engineering, Power Machinery Engineering, and Electrical Engineering," "Civil Engineering," "Materials Technologies," and "Mechanical Engineering and Robotics."
RAEX serves as the ranking operator for the “Three University Missions” family of rankings, established by the Russian Union of Rectors on the instructions of Vladimir Putin. The RAEX ranking is the only one in the country to have successfully passed an audit by the IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence. Since 2022, it has also been published in a subject-based version. Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University annually ranks first or second in Russia in the field of “Petroleum Engineering.”
The ranking methodology evaluates the quality of educational and scientific activities at universities, as well as their social impact. The heaviest weight is allocated to criteria such as the average Unified State Exam (USE) score of applicants, the faculty-to-student ratio, the academic degrees held by the teaching staff, the volume of publications indexed in the Web of Science scientometric database, articles published in the journals of the Russian "White List," citation rates, educational process funding, revenue generated from research activities, and the university's media activity.
RAEX ranking criteria are built exclusively on objective and quantifiable metrics and do not factor in expert opinion surveys, contrasting with the methodology used by the compilers of the highly influential global university ranking from the British company QS (Quacquarelli Symonds). Notably, in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University consistently ranks within the global top five for the "Engineering - Mineral & Mining Engineering" profile, alongside world-renowned institutions such as the Colorado School of Mines (USA), the University of New South Wales (Australia), and McGill University (Canada).