ITMO University reached top 20 of the Media Index for Russia Universities thanks to their success at the student sport programming contest АСМ ICPC 2016. It also helped that President Vladimir Putin met with the young programmers and their coaches from ITMO U and St. Petersburg State University while he was in town for St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June. 

The Media Index is calculated automatically by analyzing the number of times a university's name is mentioned in the news, the number of backlinks, the influence of media outlets, the prominence of the position in the stories. It also takes into account quotes, pictures, engaging titles, as well as visibility and reach of the media outlet. 

Media Monitoring ranked Russian universities that were mentioned in the media in May 2016. The experts analyzed almost 32,000 media portals including TV channels, radio, newspapers, information agencies and online portals.

This year the top-3 saved their positions – Lomonosov Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics and North-West Institute of Management were the most discussible. Most of leaders entered the ranking because of achievements in Times Higher Education and QS Rankings.

Check out the complete Media Monitoring ranking here.