The list contains a number of surprises. All the data comes from official sources: the Education Ministry's annual statistical bulletin, the university admissions database and the National Statistical Office. Four indicators deal with the teachers themselves - their level of qualification, publications, language exams and the number of students per teacher), four with the quality and learning environment of the students themselves (competition for places, number of PhD students, the number of students per computer, the number who have taken language exams).

In the eight rankings, the Miklós Zrinyi Military Academy won two first places and two second places. They lead by a wide margin in the number of teachers with two or more language exams, and they also have the largest proportion of doctoral students. The university also scores highly in the number of computers and in the ratio of students to teachers. It scored poorly in two rankings, however: it was almost last in the level of academic qualification of its teachers, which also explains why its teachers published less than other institutions'. The next three institutions, the Budapest Technical University, the Semmelweiss Medical School and the University of Szeged were no surprises. But the Corvinus University's ninth place and ELTE Budapest's tenth place do not reflect public expectations of the institutions. These two rank well in terms of the qualifications of their teachers and in terms of their students' linguistic abilities, but they have few computers and high student to teacher ratios.

Pál Tomori College is the highest-ranked four-year college, though this is mainly because it only opened its doors this year and has 24 full-time students. Art colleges are also in a similarly unusual position, with few students and many teachers. In terms of publications, they also score well, since each exhibited artwork counts as a publication. The Hungarian University of Industrial Design comes first on this count.