On October 16th, the QS Asia University Rankings 2018. was released. According to the ranking, 400 great universities from 17 Asian countries and regions are listed. In total, 137 universities from China are on the list, among which 103 of them are from mainland China, 7 from Hongkong, 2 from Macao, and 25 of them are from Taiwan. It is the first time that Shantou University is listed 281st to 290th in the ranking, and it ranks 64th among all the universities from mainland China. Shantou University is listed into international authoritative university ranking once again since Shantou University has been in Times Higher Education World University Rankings for three years from 2015.

The ten indicators used to compile QS Asia University Rankings 2018 are as follows: academic reputation (30%), employer reputation (20%), faculty/student ratio (15%), citations per paper (10%) and papers per faculty (10%), staff with a PhD (5%), proportion of international faculty (2.5%) and proportion of international students (2.5%), proportion of inbound exchange students (2.5%) and proportion of outbound exchange students (2.5%).