Methodology of language school ranking
Providing a transparent course comparison is at the core of our mission.
Our criteria applied for the rankings are 100% transparent and have been chosen carefully to assure high value for our website visitors and maximum fairness for all schools.
Ranking Criteria
Every client who books with us is invited at the end of the course to fill an online survey to review their experience at the school.
Our rankings are based exclusively on these student reviews.
The primary ranking criteria is the average overall rating of the school. In the case of several schools having the same average overall rating, the following additional student ratings are considered as criteria in the same order as mentioned below:
- Value for money
- Quality of teaching
- Facilities
- Social activities & excursions
Reviews you can trust
Our ranking is exclusively based on authentic reviews of students that have booked with us, paid for the course and whose attendance at the school has been verified by us.
Therefore, our rankings are not subject to review manipulation such as publications of fake reviews or selection bias, since every single client of ours is asked to provide a review.
We do not censor reviews. Removal or editing of reviews only apply in the case of a violation, which is outlined clearly in our Review & User Content Policies.
Schools have the option to publish a reply to negative student reviews.
Minimum number of reviews
After intense discussions we have decided to require a minimum number of only 2 reviews for a school to be positioned in the ranking.
We have opted for a low threshold for the following reasons:
- The number of reviews is always published next to each school rating. The vast majority of our visitors are familiar with online reviews and will understand that a higher number of reviews will provide a higher degree of certainty about the ranking value.
- Equal opportunities for schools that have been added in more recent times.
- Higher ranked schools will accumulate more reviews so that average ratings quickly approximate a representative value.
Coverage/Comprehensiveness
In total, over 2020 language schools are currently listed on our site. This includes nearly every larger language school chain in the segment of "language abroad programs" and over 85% of the language schools that are members of the leading language school associations ALTO (Association of Language Travel Organisations) and IALC (International Association of Language Centres).
Language schools that are missing from our ranking can reach out to us here . We can only list language schools where we collect the reviews for ourselves after a student attended a course.
The rankings are based on our own surveys of 30,385 students worldwide who booked with us and who have at least submitted an overall evaluation of a language school.
There are many great language schools that have been recently added and still need to collect the required minimum number of reviews to be positioned in the ranking.
