<p>When the three most major rankings (ARWU, QS & THE) get combined Harvard comes out on top. I think combining the rankings gives the most objective answer to academic reputation.</p>
<p>[Meta</a> University Ranking 2012/13 | MetaUniversityRanking](<a href=“http://metauniversityranking.com/worlds-top-50-universities-metascore/]Meta”>http://metauniversityranking.com/worlds-top-50-universities-metascore/)</p>
<p>MIT, Cambridge, Caltech and Oxford come next.</p>
<p>Interesting. I agree the meta-analysis gets rid of some of the noise and biases. The top 10 on this list are truly the super-elites in academia…and it hasn’t changed much over the years.</p>
<p>This isn’t just the “academic reputation” that is being calculated. This is the combined overall ranking, which includes academic reputation.</p>
<p>If we talk about temperature, it is like that you go to North Pole for 5 days and Africa for 5 days, and you claim that it is the same as staying home for 10 days. Stats is more than often being abused than properly used, especially when we try to average garbage.</p>