The recently released 2011 QS World University Rankings placed UNSW as the top-ranked university in New South Wales in the discipline of Statistics and Operations Research. The QS World University Rankings rated universities by discipline based on key measures of research and teaching excellence, including academic reputation, research impact, and staff:student ratios. UNSW was ranked 32nd in the world in statistics, and third in the southern hemisphere. Ranked one place behind Yale, statistics at UNSW placed ahead of many highly regarded institutions around the world including Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington in the US, and Lancaster University in the UK.

Highly regarded nationally and internationally, UNSW statistics researchers have been awarded over $2M in current government funding. The department boasts a Moran Medallist, a Young Tall Poppy, and fellows of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Australia's longest running Masters of Statistics program has been complemented by the addition of the very successful Masters of Financial Mathematics and more recently the Masters of Biostatistics, all of which are taught on campus at UNSW.