The purpose of this work was to study the relationship between the level of internationalization of universities and their position in authoritative world rankings. Nowadays, the process of integration into the international educational space is becoming a priority for many Russian universities. However, the issue of the impact level concerning an international component strengthening on the growth of their rating positions is still debatable.The article attempted to determine the existence of a relationship between these indicators using mathematical statistics methods.The study is based on factor correlation analysis. Such indicators such as the share of foreign student number in the total number of students (%), the share of the number of foreign citizens in the total number of scientific and pedagogical employees of the university (%), the share of joint articles with foreign scientists in the total number of publications of the university during the year, indexed by the Scopus database (%) were chosen as the key indicators characterizing the international activity of universities. The objects of research were 22 Russian universities, included in the global QS rating during 2016, as well as the universities that were included in the first hundred of this rating.The correlation analysis demonstrated the presence of a weak, very weak and slightly negative correlation for Russian universities between the rating position and the indicators of international activity with the maximum closeness of the relationship between the share of joint articles and the place in the rating. The relationship between the indicators under study among the leading higher education institutions is more pronounced. The maximum closeness of relation is observed between the share of foreign teachers and the rating position of a university.The results of the study may be of interest to the administrations of higher education institutions during the adjustment of strategic development plans.