Indian higher education institutes stand in the top 500 categories of the QS rankings among the SAARC nations, and Pakistan also has a presence on the list. In the top 500 categories, there are nine Indian Universities, and three are from Pakistan.

Whereas no other SAARC nations are listed in the top 500 brackets, two universities in Bangladesh ranked among the top 1,000 institutes, and the Islamabad based National University for Science and Technology (NUST) is the best performing Pakistani institute and stood in 334th place in the global rankings.

Bangladesh is represented by the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (801-1,000) and the University of Dhaka (801-1,000).

In Asia, excluding China, Singapore is the only country with two universities, i.e., the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, in the top 20 categories, and Japan’s 50 universities ranked the second highest among the Asian nations. However, not a single university is in the top 20 list.