The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-2015 list the best global universities and are the only international university performance tables to judge world class universities across all of their core missions - teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The top universities rankings employ 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available, which are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.
Top 200 World Class University List and Admission
You can view the full World University Rankings 2014-2015 top 400 below and explore the criteria used to assess the world’s greatest universities, while our in-depth analysis of the results shines more light on the data.
Note: Universities that display a blue icon feature an enhanced institutional profile, which can be viewed by clicking the institution's name.
Harvard university has once again topped the Times Higher Education's world reputation ranking of universities. The 2013 rankings, show the US dominating the list with more than 40 institutions in the top 100.
Following Harvard are Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Cambridge university, taking second and third place respectively. Oxford university has climbed two places since the 2012 rankings, to take fourth place and Stanford university has dropped down to sixth.
The rankings also highlight a big improvement for Australia which now has six universities represented in the top 100 - the third highest representation in the list behind the US and the UK. Australia has two new entries: the university of New South Wales and Monash university.
With nine universities in the top 100, the UK has the second highest number of representatives after the US. University College London (UCL) has moved up one place to 20th and the London School of Economics (LSE) has jumped up to 25th in the latest rankings. Manchester university has entered the top 50 for the first time and Edinburgh university, the only Scottish institution in the list, has moved up three places to 46th place. It's not such good news for Leeds university though, the university has dropped out of the top 100 since the 2012 rankings placed them within the 81-90 band.
Overall, the UK's representation in the top 100 has declined since 2011. Phil Baty, rankings editor at Times Higher Education magazine, said:
There is some good news for the UK, but only for a handful of its elite institutions. Outside the chosen few, there is cause for alarm: the UK has lost three institutions from the world top 100 list since the reputation rankings were first published in 2011.
Traditionally, the strength in depth of the UK system has been one of its great features. Having a large number of institutions with truly world-class standing has delivered huge returns for the whole sector and the wider economy. However, it now seems that a gap is opening up between the very best and the rest, with even household name institutions like Sheffield and Leeds losing their lustre and falling down the rankings.
In total, 20 countries are represented in the list. The chart above shows the rankings broken down by country for 2012 and 2013.
The visualisation below shows how 2013's top 25 institutions by reputation have switched positions since the 2011 edition of this report. Harvard, MIT and Cambridge have been first, second and third respectively every year, while LSE, UCLA and Columbia University (NY) have seen the largest rises over that period.
The annual world reputation rankings, a subsidiary of the Times Higher Education world university rankings, are based based on the results of the Academic Reputation Survey carried out by Ipsos MediaCT for Thomson Reuters. The full methodology for the rankings along with the individual scores by university can be found on the Times Higher Education site.
The latest release by Times Higher Education ranking brings to attention a group that the university ranking specialists have dubbed the 'super-brands' - a collection of elite Anglo-American universities making up the top six. According to the latest release the 'super-brands', headed by Harvard and including MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University are "heads and shoulders above the rest". Here are some other findings from the release:
• Five countries are represented in the top 20: the US, UK, Japan, Canada and Switzerland
• The University of Tokyo at 9th place, is the highest ranking university outside of the UK or US
• Six countries (compared with only four last year) have one representative in the top 100: Brazil, Taiwan, Belgium, Israel, Russia and Turkey
• Japan, the Netherlands and Germany each have five top 100 institutions, with Germany gaining a new entrant in 2013 (Freie Universität Berlin)
You can see the full 2013 world reputation rankings below, we have also included the 2012 and 2011 positions. The downloadable spreadsheet also contains breakdowns by country. What can you do with the data?
Data summary
Times Higher Education world reputation rankings
2013 Rank 2012 Rank 2011 Rank Institution Country
1 1 1 Harvard University US
2 2 2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology US
3 3 3 University of Cambridge UK
4 6 6 University of Oxford UK
5 5 4 University of California, Berkeley US
6 4 5 Stanford University US
7 7 7 Princeton University US
8 9 12 University of California, Los Angeles US
9 8 8 University of Tokyo Japan
10 10 9 Yale University US
11 11 10 California Institute of Technology US
12 12 13 University of Michigan US
13 15 23 Columbia University US
14 14 15 University of Chicago US
14 13 11 Imperial College London UK
16 16 17 University of Toronto Canada
17 16 16 Cornell University US
18 19 22 University of Pennsylvania US
19 18 14 Johns Hopkins University US
20 21 19 University College London UK
20 22 24 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich Switzerland
22 23 27 National University of Singapore Singapore
23 20 18 Kyoto University Japan
24 23 21 University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign US
25 29 37 London School of Economics and Political Science UK
26 37 28 Carnegie Mellon University US
27 32 31 University of Texas at Austin US
27 28 26 University of Washington US
29 34 51-60 New York University US
30 27 25 University of Wisconsin-Madison US
31 25 31 University of British Columbia Canada
31 33 36 Duke University US
31 25 29 McGill University Canada
34 36 30 University of California, San Diego US
35 30 35 Tsinghua University China
36 39 42 The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
37 35 40 Northwestern University US
38 41 39 Georgia Institute of Technology US
39 43 45 University of Melbourne Australia
40 31 34 University of California, San Francisco US
41 51-60 51-60 Seoul National University Korea, Republic Of
42 44 51-60 Australian National University Australia
42 39 19 University of Massachusetts US
44 42 48 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Germany
45 38 43 Peking University China
46 49 45 University of Edinburgh UK
47 51-60 61-70 University of Manchester UK
48 44 38 University of California, Davis US
49 50 51-60 The University of Sydney Australia
50 Lomonosov Moscow State University Russian Federation
50 47 47 Purdue University US
51-60 51-60 49 Delft University of Technology Netherlands
51-60 61-70 71-80 École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Switzerland
51-60 91-100 Middle East Technical University Turkey
51-60 47 43 University of Minnesota US
51-60 46 41 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill US
51-60 51-60 51-60 The Ohio State University US
51-60 51-60 50 Osaka University Japan
51-60 51-60 61-70 Pennsylvania State University US
51-60 51-60 51-60 University of California, Santa Barbara US
51-60 61-70 81-90 National Taiwan University Taiwan
61-70 61-70 91-100 The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Hong Kong
61-70 51-60 51-60 Karolinska Institute Sweden
61-70 61-70 61-70 King's College London UK
61-70 81-90 91-100 Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Korea, Republic Of
61-70 81-90 81-90 Leiden University Netherlands
61-70 61-70 University of São Paulo Brazil
61-70 61-70 71-80 University of Southern California US
61-70 61-70 61-70 Technische Universität München Germany
61-70 51-60 51-60 Tohoku University Japan
61-70 51-60 51-60 Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan
71-80 61-70 Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel
71-80 61-70 71-80 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Germany
71-80 81-90 81-90 Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium
71-80 71-80 71-80 Michigan State University US
71-80 81-90 91-100 Nanyang Technological University Singapore
71-80 71-80 Université Paris-Sorbonne France
71-80 61-70 51-60 University of Pittsburgh US
71-80 71-80 81-90 The University of Queensland Australia Australia
71-80 71-80 81-90 Universität Heidelberg Germany
81-90 71-80 81-90 University of Amsterdam Netherlands
81-90 91-100 61-70 Boston University US
81-90 81-90 Brown University US
81-90 81-90 The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
81-90 91-100 61-70 École Polytechnique France
81-90 81-90 61-70 University of Florida US
81-90 The University of New South Wales Australia
81-90 91-100 Université Pierre et Marie Curie France
81-90 91-100 71-80 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey US
81-90 71-80 71-80 Utrecht University Netherlands
81-90 71-80 71-80 Washington University in St Louis US
91-100 91-100 81-90 University of Bristol UK
91-100 Freie Universität Berlin Germany
91-100 81-90 71-80 Lund University Sweden
91-100 University of Maryland, College Park US
91-100 Monash University Australia
91-100 91-100 Université Paris-Sud France
91-100 71-80 81-90 Texas A&M University US
91-100 71-80 61-70 Uppsala University Sweden
91-100 91-100 Wageningen University and Research Center Netherlands
Source: THE</div>
