League tables rank universities on a wide variety of factors. This list from the QS World University Rankings is based on assessment of six criteria: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, international student ratio and international faculty ratio.
For several years in a row now, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology near Boston has been named the best university in the world. The Anglo-American world dominated the top of the list, with nine out of the top ten universities in the list being either in the USA or the United Kingdom, with only ETH Zurich in Switzerland being able to squeeze into the top 10 from outside of these two countries. The cities with the most universities in the list are Hong Kong (5) and London (4).
If you want to know what are the best universities in the world for different subjects, check out this post.
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA
The perennial number 1 on this list, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the Boston metropolitan area. MIT is especially well-known for its strong programs in fields such as engineering and computer science, but it is also among the world’s best universities in areas like linguistics and accounting.
2. University of Cambridge, UK
Second in the world and the best university in Europe, the University of Cambridge offers the highest quality of education in a wide range of subjects, being among the best universities in the world in fields such as arts & humanities, engineering and history.
3. Stanford University, USA
Leland Stanford Junior University, or just Stanford University for short, is located in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Being among the best universities in the world in many disciplines, the university is affectionately nicknamed Nerd Nation. Stanford also excels in sports though: as of 2022 Stanford has won more NCAA national championships in team sports than any other university and it tops the list of Olympic gold medals won by students and alumni among American universities, at 153 (tied with the University of Southern California).
4. University of Oxford, UK
The oldest university on this list, the University of Oxford is the second-oldest university in the world in continuous operation and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Oxford is the home of the world-famous Rhodes Scholarship and the Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world.
5. Harvard University, USA
Funnily enough, of the five best universities in the world, three are located in a city named Cambridge. Like MIT, Harvard is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts near Boston. Part of the prestigious Ivy League, Harvard is the oldest university in the United States.
=6. California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA
Caltech is especially well known for its programs in the natural sciences, and for being the university where the main characters in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory work.
=6. Imperial College London, UK
The highest-rated of the four London universities on this list, Imperial focuses on science, technology, business and medicine.
8. University College London (UCL), UK
University College London offers world-class education in a great location, with the university’s campus being in Bloomsbury in central London.
9. ETH Zurich, Switzerland
ETH Zurich is the only university in the top 10 from outside the USA and the UK. It has particularly strong programs in science and technology.
10. University of Chicago, USA
The University of Chicago has been historically so notable in many different fields that there are established “Chicago Schools” in at least architecture, economics, literary criticism, mathematical analysis and sociology. It was also where the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction was produced.
11. National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
12. Peking University, China
13. University of Pennsylvania, USA
14. Tsinghua University, China
15. The University of Edinburgh, UK
=16. École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
=16. Princeton University, USA
18. Yale University, USA
19. Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore
20. Cornell University, USA
21. The University of Hong Kong, China
22. Columbia University, USA
23. University of Tokyo, Japan
24. Johns Hopkins University, USA
25. University of Michigan, USA
26. Université PSL, France
27. University of California, Berkeley, USA
28. University of Manchester, UK
29. Seoul National University, South Korea
30. Australian National University, Australia
31. McGill University, Canada
32. Northwestern University, USA
33. The University of Melbourne, Australia
=34. Fudan University, China
=34. University of Toronto, USA
36. Kyoto University, Japan
37. King’s College London, UK
38. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
39. New York University (NUY), USA
40. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China
41. The University of Sydney, Australia
=42. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea
=42. Zhejian University, China
44. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA
45. The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), Australia
46. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
47. University of British Columbia, Canada
48. Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France
49. Technical University of Munich, Germany
=50. Duke University, USA
=50. The University of Queensland, Australia
52. Carnegie Mellon University, USA
53. University of California, San Diego, USA
54. City University of Hong Kong, China
55. Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
56. The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK
57. Monash University, Australia
58. University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
59. Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany
60. Sorbonne University, France
=61. Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
=61. University of Bristol, UK
63. Brown University, USA
64. The University of Warwick, UK
=65. Heidelberg University, Germany
=65. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China
67. University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
68. Osaka University, Japan
69. Paris-Saclay University
70. University of Malaya
71. Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), South Korea
72. University of Texas at Austin, USA
73. Yonsei University, South Korea
74. Korea University, South Korea
75. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
76. KU Leuven, Netherlands
77. National Taiwan University, Taiwan
78. University of Southampton, UK
79. Tohoku University, Japan
80. University of Washington, USA
81. University of Glasgow, UK
82. University of Copenhagen, Denmark
=83. University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
=83. University of Zurich, Switzerland
85. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
86. University of Leeds, UK
87. The University of Auckland, New Zealand
88. Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), USA
89. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
90. The University of Western Australia, Australia
91. University of Birmingham, UK
92. Durham University, UK
93. Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), USA
94. University of Science and Technology of China, China
95. Lund University, Sweden
=96. The University of Sheffield, UK
=96. University of St Andrews, UK
98. Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
99. Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea
100. Rice University, USA
The two dominant forces in the list are the Anglo-American countries and East Asia. More than a quarter (27) of the universities in the top 100 are in the United States, with the USA also claiming five of the top 10 spots. The United Kingdom has 17 universities in the list. In East Asia, China topped the list with 11 universities (including five in Hong Kong), with South Korea having six and Japan five.
The rise of East Asia could be even more noticeable with some more internationalism. The ranking criteria where many East Asian universities are lacking are international student ratio and international faculty ratio. QS states of these criteria: “A highly international university … demonstrates the ability to attract quality students and staff from across the world, and it implies a highly global outlook. Strong international institutions provide a multinational environment, building international sympathies and global awareness.” This is something where the universities of the English-speaking world still seem to have a noticeable advantage over the East Asian ones.
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