London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) has been named the world’s leading university of art and design, according to the 2015 QS World University Rankings.

QS—a higher-education networking organisation—ranks universities according to their reputation among academics and employers, the ratio of faculty members to students, the number of international students and staff, and the number of citations referencing work by each universities in research papers published within the last year.

With a total score of 96.0, the RCA triumphs in the art and design category, followed by a cluster of prestigious American art education institutions including Parsons The New School for Design and the Pratt Institute—both in New York; MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Rhode Island School of Design.

The announcement comes after a successful period of development for the college—which recently launched new state-of-the-art buildings and facilities in its Battersea campus—and the ambitious recruitment of a world-leading faculty, most recently Dr Jonathan Edelman, from Stanford’s d.school.

“We are delighted to be recognized as the top university for Art and Design internationally,” Dr Paul Thompson, rector of the RCA, said in a statement. “The RCA is highly selective, taking the world’s most talented artists and designers. Those students go on to transform the world—in fine art, fashion, automotive design, and engineering,” he added.

Indeed, the RCA can boast of having produced a roster of illustrious alumni, including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Tracey Emin (see Tracey Emin’s Dejection Is Becoming Too Predictable), Chris Ofili (see Chris Ofili’s Glittering, Dung-Encrusted Paintings Return to New York), Jake and Dinos Chapman (see Don’t Take Children to Museums, Says Jake Chapman), the fashion designer Christopher Bailey (chief creative and chief executive officer of Burberry), the film maker Ridley Scott, and the industrial designer James Dyson.