Just an aside on the topic of German research. In Germany a lot of research is not done at the universities but at various institutes such as Max-Planck, Frau

Just an aside on the topic of German research. In Germany a lot of research is not done at the universities but at various institutes such as Max-Planck, Fraunhofer, Helmholtz, Leibniz and a lot more. General overview, research institutes being one item: https://www.research-in-germany.org/en/research-landscape.html https://www.research-in-germany.org/en/research-landscape.ht... Ca. 400 universities - but ca. 1,000 publicly funded research institutions (https://www.research-in-germany.org/en/research-landscape/research-institutes.html https://www.research-in-germany.org/en/research-landscape/re...). So, the ranking of the universities overall may not be completely comparable.