1 Harvard University United States
2 Stanford University United States
3 University of California, Berkeley United States
4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) United States
5 University of Cambridge United Kingdom
6 California Institute of Technology United States
7 Princeton University United States
8 Columbia University United States
9 University of Chicago United States
10 University of Oxford United Kingdom
11 Yale University United States
12 University of California, Los Angeles United States
13 Cornell University United States
14 University of California, San Diego United States
15 University of Pennsylvania United States
16 University of Washington United States
17 The Johns Hopkins University United States
18 University of California, San Francisco United States
19 University of Wisconsin - Madison United States
20 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Switzerland
21 The University of Tokyo Japan
21 University College London United Kingdom
23 University of Michigan - Ann Arbor United States
24 The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine United Kingdom
25 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign United States
26 Kyoto University Japan
27 New York University United States
28 University of Toronto Canada
29 University of Minnesota, Twin Cities United States
30 Northwestern University United States
31 Duke University United States
32 Washington University in St. Louis United States
33 University of Colorado at Boulder United States
34 Rockefeller University United States
35 University of California, Santa Barbara United States
36 The University of Texas at Austin United States
37 Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris 6 France
38 University of Maryland, College Park United States
39 University of Paris Sud (Paris 11) France
40 University of British Columbia Canada
41 The University of Manchester United Kingdom
42 University of Copenhagen Denmark
43 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill United States
44 Karolinska Institute Sweden
45 University of California, Irvine United States
46 The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas United States
47 University of California, Davis United States
47 University of Southern California United States
49 Vanderbilt University United States
50 Technical University Munich Germany
51 The University of Edinburgh United Kingdom
52 Carnegie Mellon University United States
52 Utrecht University Netherlands
54 Pennsylvania State University - University Park United States
54 University of Heidelberg Germany
54 University of Melbourne Australia
57 Purdue University - West Lafayette United States
58 McGill University Canada
59 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel
60 University of Zurich Switzerland
61 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick United States
61 University of Munich Germany
61 University of Pittsburgh United States
64 University of Bristol United Kingdom
65 The Ohio State University - Columbus United States
66 The Australian National University Australia
67 Brown University United States
67 King’s College London United Kingdom
69 University of Geneva Switzerland
69 University of Oslo Norway
71 Ecole Normale Superieure - Paris France
71 University of Florida United States
73 Uppsala University Sweden
74 Leiden University Netherlands
75 Boston University United States
76 University of Helsinki Finland
77 Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Israel
78 University of Arizona United States
79 Arizona State University - Tempe United States
79 Moscow State University Russia
81 Aarhus University Denmark
82 Stockholm University Sweden
83 University of Basel Switzerland
83 University of Nottingham United Kingdom
85 Ghent University Belgium
85 Indiana University Bloomington United States
85 Osaka University Japan
85 The University of Queensland Australia
85 University of Utah United States
90 University of Rochester United States
91 The University of Western Australia Australia
92 McMaster University Canada
92 Michigan State University United States
92 Rice University United States
92 University of Groningen Netherlands
92 Weizmann Institute of Science Israel
97 University of Strasbourg France
97 University of Sydney Australia
99 Case Western Reserve University United States
100 University of Freiburg Germany </p>
<p>The most surprising placement I see is UCSD. It's two spots lower than UCLA, and it's ranked above Penn, Hopkins, and Michigan. It's probably a bit higher than it should be, but otherwise it's the usual suspects.</p>
<p>Any ranking that puts UC San Francisco up there clearly isn’t focused on measuring anything about undergraduate education, since UCSF is a grad school and medical only only - no undergraduates.</p>
<p>Can someone explain NYU’s inclusion? I thought with the exception of applied math, NYU was only strong in fields not likely to generate international prestige, eg languages, art history, theatre, etc. Glad to see that UCI is on the list.</p>
<p>Timetodecide, while Rice is an outstanding school, its overall research output is much less than that of ASU. There are plenty of great undergraduate schools, including my own, that weren’t included in the list.</p>
<p>Here we see how differences in criteria can significantly change the rankings.</p>
<p>Rankings like this, which appear to be mainly about research output, can produce a very different ranking from those based on undergraduate admissions selectivity (or, “how good are the worst undergraduate students at the school?”).</p>
<p>The problem with the meta ranking is that some of the averages are thrown off by one ranking which is far different than the other two. ARWU and THE both rank Stanford at 2, whereas QS ranks it at 15; This can also be seen with UCLA which is ranked 31st by QS but ranked 12th and 13th by ARWU and THE.</p>
<p>Taking a look at the median would be better imo :)</p>
<p>NYU has arguably the top philosophy department in the world, or if not that, certainly one of the top 5. It’s also very strong in economics, and strong (top 20 or higher in the U.S.) in sociology, English, history, and political science. It has a top 5-ish law school, a top 5-ish school of public affairs, a top 10-ish business school, and a top 20-ish research-oriented medical school. Apart from medicine and math, however, NYU is not generally a powerhouse in STEM fields. Nonetheless, if you have leading faculties in law, medicine, business, and most of the social sciences and humanities, and they’re productive, they’re going to get cited a lot, and the school will do quite well in rankings like the ARWU. I also wouldn’t pooh-pooh art history; a lot of people, especially in Europe, take art history very seriously, and if NYU faculty are making important contributions to the field, they’re going to get cited. </p>
<p>I would also note that, New York being New York, NYU tends to attract, retain and develop a disproportionate share of faculty whose work has a strong international focus, or are themselves the products of transnational academia with relationships and a following on both sides of the Atlantic. Many also have celebrity or “public intellectual” status, either previously acquired and carried with them to NYU or developed in New York (where better, after all?) and consequently tend to become household names in academic circles. These attributes can help get you a leg up in world citation counts.</p>
<p>I like the meta ranking, probably because it fits pretty closely with my intuitive sense of how the U.S., Canadian, and U.K. universities stack up in overall faculty strength (though I probably wouldn’t put Boston University in the top 50). The aggregate rankings reflect underlying academic strengths that tend to push through any idiosyncratic metrics or weightings that may knock particular schools down in particular rankings. I would hasten to add that this should not necessarily be used as a guide to where undergraduates should study.</p>
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<p>Well, there are two Asian universities in the top 50, University of Tokyo at #22 and Kyoto University at #24. Seems about right to me. It’s harder to know where to rank the top Chinese universities. It’s probably overloaded with British universities (8 in the top 50 worldwide seems very high) and probably light on continental European universities (only 1 in the top 40 and 4 in the top 50), probably because two of the three rankings used to construct this come out of the UK.</p>
<p>U Utah surprises me; IMO it shouldn’t be in the top 100 (and replaced with either an Asian university or a Continental European one).</p>
<p>But the three rankings seem to short-change undergraduate education. Undergraduate educational quality should be given some weight since:</p>
<p>1) Many of those who use the rankings are shopping for undergraduate education</p>
<p>2) Many of those who go to college are not advancing on to graduate school and, for this reason, poor undergraduate quality is going to hurt on the job market (or in grad school for those who do go on to grad school)</p>
<p>My professors, some of which might have contributed to any one of the three, always complain about undergraduate education not being taken into account.</p>
<p>Could you post a link to your source that these three rankings do not give undergraduate education “some weight”? I’m not saying you’re wrong I’m just really curious as to what methodology that they use.</p>
<p>I always thought of the ARWU rankings as more about research and published papers than the quality of undergraduate teaching. That’s why I’m not surprised to see some of the bigger state universities listed above universities like Rice or Carnegie-Mellon.</p>
