Five South Korean universities ranked among the top 100 global universities, the ranking released by QS Quacquarelli Symonds showed Wednesday.

Seoul National University sat at 41st on the 20th edition of the QS World University Rankings, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) ranked 56th, Yonsei University and Korea University sat at 76th and 79th, respectively, and Pohang University of Science and Technology was 100th.

For its ninth year, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ranked first with an overall score of 100, while the University of Cambridge placed second with 99.2 points, followed by the University of Oxford with 98.9, Harvard with 98.3 and Stanford with 98.1 points.

Established in 2004, the London-based ranking system aims to help students identify leading universities overall and in particular subjects around the globe.

Universities are ranked according to their performance by indicators of academic excellence, including students' employability after attending the school, each school's International Research Network and how each university is tackling environmental, social and governance issues, according to the ranking methodology.

“Although (Korea) confronted a decline in the school-age population, (the country) will be able to overcome the situation with its excellent higher education system,” said Ben Sowter, senior vice president at the rankings.

“Korea showed a high-performance level on par with Germany, Japan and France, which have larger populations and economies (than Korea),” he added.