how it works

rateschools.vercel.app ranks 225 universities by a single number called aura. aura is not collected from a survey and it is not weighted by anybody’s reputation score. two universities are shown side by side, somebody picks one, and an elo rating does the rest. right now the board has absorbed 80 of those decisions.

what is aura?

aura is an elo rating. it is the same maths chess uses to rank players, applied to universities. every school starts at 1500. when a visitor picks one school over another, the winner gains points and the loser gives up the same number. beating a highly rated school is worth more than beating a low-rated one.

how is the ranking calculated, exactly?

for a matchup between school A and school B, the expected result for A is 1 / (1 + 10^((auraB − auraA)/400)). the winner's new rating is its old rating plus K × (1 − expected), with K = 32. the loser's rating moves by the same amount in the opposite direction, so the total aura on the board never changes.

who decides which universities appear?

the starting list is roughly the 200 most widely recognised universities worldwide, spread deliberately across every inhabited continent rather than concentrated in one country. the list is the only editorial decision on the site. every number after that comes from votes.

what are the tiers?

S, A, B and C are percentile bands of the aura ranking: the top 5% of rated schools are S, the top 20% are A, the top 45% are B, and everyone else rated is C. a school needs at least 5 votes before it is tiered at all — until then it shows as unrated, so a single lucky vote cannot mint an S-tier school.

can people cheat the vote?

each visitor gets an anonymous ballot id, is never shown the same pairing twice, and is rate limited. that stops casual stuffing. it is not a defence against a determined attacker with a botnet, and the site does not pretend otherwise — this is a vibes leaderboard, not an accreditation body.

what is the powerup?

every 10 votes arms a 5x multiplier on your next vote, which moves the elo five times as far. skipping while a powerup is armed drains it by one, so the fastest way to waste it is to get picky.

is this an official university ranking?

no. it measures perceived aura among the people who happen to visit and vote. it is not a measure of teaching quality, research output, graduate outcomes, or value for money, and it should not be used to choose where to study.

how often does it update?

instantly. there is no publication cycle. every rating on the site reflects every vote cast up to the moment the page was rendered.