The ANU cracked the world's top ten universities with the strongest global connections in an annual Times Higher Education ranking released on Wednesday.
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Finishing seventh in a list of the 200 most international universities of 2017, the ANU climbed 18 places from the previous year to match its 2015 ranking.
It is the fourth year in a row the university has led Australia in the list.
The ANU received an overall score of 93 for its proportion of international staff, international students and research papers published with at least one co-author from another country.
It performed slightly better for the staff and student criteria than the research papers.
Australia went from claiming one top-25 place in 2016 to five this year, including the University of New South Wales (14th), University of Melbourne (18th), Monash University (21st) and the University of Sydney (24th).
It is not the first international ranking from recent months the ANU has done well in.
Last November the 6th annual Global Employability University Ranking found it had the country's most internationally employable graduates. The ANU came 22nd out of the top 150 institutions for global employability.
ANU Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington was pleased with the results and said being international was part of the university's DNA.
"Part of our success is due to the fact ANU also has a strong commitment to draw on the best research from across the globe and to collaborate with researchers in other countries," Professor Hughes-Warrington said.
"We are home to leading centres for the study of the politics, economics and societies of the Asia-Pacific, including specialist areas on China, Japan, Indonesia, Myanmar and the nations of the South Pacific."
Professor Hughes-Warrington also pointed to the ANU's links to national institutions, government departments and foreign embassies and high commissions.
She said federal government policy decisions around visa processing, admissions and post-study work had been crucial, while the ACT government made international students feel welcome with "simple things" such as providing free transport on buses.
While Professor Hughes-Warrington remained positive about the future, The Times Higher Education reported some higher education leaders from other counties were concerned about the impact of Brexit and US President Donald Trump's negative comments about immigrants on their overseas recruitment.
Starting from first place in the international universities ranking, the top five were the ETH Zurich and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, Hong Kong University and the National University of Singapore.
The list considered all institutions that featured in the top 800 of the education magazine's overall 2016-17 World University Rankings. The University of Melbourne lead Australia in that list, coming in at 33.
