Shanghai Jiao Tong University announced 2008 Academic Rankings of World Universities (ARWU), in which NTU is ranked 164th in the world, an advancement of 8 spots from last years ranking of 172nd, and reigns supreme in all universities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Shanghai Jiao-tong University uses a set of combined indicators in their evaluation of the academic performance of top universities in the world. These indicators include: number of Nobel prize and Fields Medal winners, number of highly cited researchers(HiCi), number of theses published in Nature and Science journals, and number of papers collected by SCI and SSCI

With the funding from Ministry of Educations 'En route to a top notch university project', NTUs performance in the area of number of theses published in Nature and Science, and number of papers collected by SCI and SSCI showed considerable progress from last years, and the total score also demonstrated tremendous growth. In addition, the ranking of total number of academic papers published within the last ten years moved up from last years 80th place to this years 72nd place. The number of papers cited within the last ten years also progressed from the 224th place to the 215th place, achieving the preliminary goal of doubling the research papers in quantity and quality.