GW lost ground in the QS World Rankings released Tuesday, clinching the No. 296 spot for 2011-2012, after securing No. 168 six years ago.

The University fell 32 spots from last year’s ranking of No. 262, GW’s largest single-year decline since Quacquarelli Symonds, the global education enterprise, released their first report in 2005.

The QS World Rankings includes 300 colleges from across the globe. This year, the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology topped the list.

The rankings are based on six indicators, listed in order of significance: academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, faculty to student ratio, proportion of international students and proportion of international faculty.

Georgetown University ranked No. 166 and American University did not rank.