Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University

Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University (SAU) is a public university in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka, devoted to agriculture and related sciences. It was upgraded to university status in 2001, though its origins go back to 1938.

Rankings

• Ulkaa Edu Rank 2027: 14th overall (score 76.5). For positions 1 to 14, the position reflects Ulkaa's admission competitiveness assessment. In the same edition it is 12th among public universities and 9th in the Dhaka division.
• QS Asia University Rankings 2026: band 801-850.
• THE World University Rankings 2027: listed as a Reporter, which means the university supplied data but has no numeric rank.
• Webometrics 2024: world rank 3528.

The Ulkaa data holds no QS World entry for SAU. Its OpenAlex record shows an h-index of 163 in 2026.

In 2021 the university reported 1,242 first-year admissions, the latest year that figure appears in the Ulkaa data.

SAU began as the Bengal Agricultural Institute, set up on 11 December 1938 by A. K. Fazlul Huq. It was later upgraded to a college and, in 2001, to a university, becoming the 17th public university of Bangladesh according to Wikipedia.

The campus is in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, in the middle of Dhaka, and covers about 87 acres. The campus lies within the capital rather than in a rural district. Check the university's own history page for details of the institute's early years.

Wikipedia puts the current student body at about 5,358, taught by 361 academic staff. Degrees run from the four-year bachelor programmes through MS to PhD.

SAU takes undergraduate students through the agricultural cluster admission test, a single test shared by nine agricultural universities since 2019. Placement depends on merit score and the choices you list. Details change each year, so follow the cluster circular.

According to circular summaries for the 2025-26 session, the test was a 100-mark multiple-choice exam lasting one hour, with 1 mark per correct answer and 0.25 deducted for each wrong one. Subject weighting covered English, biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics.

Competition is wide: for 2025-26 about 88,228 candidates sat the cluster test for 3,701 seats across the participating universities, according to Wikipedia's entry on Khulna Agricultural University. That figure covers all nine universities, not SAU alone. The Ulkaa data records 1,242 first-year admissions at SAU in 2021.

The same cluster system means a student applies once and can be placed at any of the nine, so SAU competes with the other eight for the same applicants.

SAU has five faculties: Agriculture, Agribusiness Management, Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Science, and Post Graduate Studies. The Faculty of Agriculture is the largest, with 14 departments including Agronomy, Horticulture, Entomology and Plant Pathology.

At undergraduate level Wikipedia lists BSc degrees in agriculture, agricultural economics, fisheries and veterinary science. Postgraduate students can take MS and PhD degrees. The Ulkaa programme table holds no SAU rows yet, so check sau.edu.bd for the current department list.

In the Ulkaa edition for 2027 the university is 11th among institutions for business subjects. In 2021, the last year with enrolment figures in the Ulkaa data, it had 4,790 students and 318 teachers, 125 of whom held a PhD.

SAU's research has a strong citation record. OpenAlex lists 2,381 works linked to the university over the five years to 2025, with 26,994 citations and 11.34 citations per work. The 2026 h-index is 163 and the two-year mean citedness is 2.14.

Yearly output was 438 works in 2025, 472 in 2024 and 459 in 2023. About 37% of its 2025 works had an international co-author.

On campus, the Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University Research System (SAURES) works on crop variety development and germplasm characterisation, according to Wikipedia. Counts of research output come from a single open index and do not capture field trials, extension reports or varieties released to farmers.

The five-year window to 2024 showed 41,530 citations and 17.21 citations per work, so the 2025 figures are lower. Read year-on-year changes with care, because OpenAlex counts shift as its records are updated.

The campus has seven student halls, four for men and three for women. Wikipedia also lists a library of more than 40,000 books, an auditorium, research fields, a poultry farm, a medical centre and a mosque.

Hall places are limited, so ask the university about current hall rules and seat numbers before applying, and check its website for the list of clubs and associations.