In El Mercurio's 2006 ranking of the "Best Universities in the Country", UACh received the highest score in "teaching quality" of any Chilean university. The same article also listed UACh second only to Universidad de Chile in research quality, and ranked the Valdivia-based university third place overall among Chilean universities. As both universities that earned higher rankings are located in Santiago (U. de Chile and Pontifical Catholic University of Chile), UACh thus became the highest ranking university in Chile outside of the nation's capital.[7]