The annual QS World University Rankings are out, and although the U.S. does not have the top-ranked university, it does dominate the elite ranks along with universities in the United Kingdom.
Cambridge University in England is ranked number 1, followed by Harvard, MIT, Yale, and Oxford.
In all, fifteen U.S. universities are in the top 25:
2. Harvard
3. MIT
4. Yale
5. Oxford
8. Chicago
9. Penn
10. Columbia
11. Stanford
12. Caltech
13. Princeton
14. Michigan
15. Cornell
16. Johns Hopkins
19. Duke
21. UC Berkeley
24. Northwestern
Another sixteen American universities rank in the top 100 in the world: UCLA (34); Brown (39); Wisconsin (41); Carnegie Mellon (43); NYU (44); North Carolina (55); Washington (56); Illinois (61); Boston University (70); Texas (76); UC San Diego (77); Washington University St. Louis (78); Georgia Tech (84); Purdue (85); Penn State (94); and Dartmouth (99). A total of 400 universities are ranked.
The rankings do not include elite liberal arts colleges because research citations account for 20 percent of the world rankings. However, the rankings do count faculty/student ratio as 20 percent of the total, so they do consider that important factor. Academic reputation is the largest factor at 40 percent, and 10 percent of the total is based on employers’ assessments of graduates.
The rankings may be especially useful if a prospective student is considering a field that involves international assignments or study abroad. The QS survey data also have tabs to see separate rankings by rating criteria (e.g., employer assessments), or by academic field (arts and humanities, engineering and technology, life sciences and medicine, natural sciences, and social sciences.
The leading U.S. universities in world employer assessments are Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale, UCLA, Chicago, Cornell, Michigan, Penn, Northwestern, Princeton, Purdue, Penn State, Duke, NYU, Texas, Boston University, Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Brown, Johns Hopkins, and North Carolina.
The U.S. universities with the strongest worldwide academic reputations are Harvard, UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, UCLA, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Cornell, Michigan, Caltech, Penn, UC San Diego, Illinois, Texas, NYU, Wisconsin, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Washington, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, Brown, and North Carolina.
Finally, the top fifteen U.S. universities in the fields of engineering and technology are MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Caltech, Illinois, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, Harvard, Michigan, Princeton, Texas, Cornell, Purdue, and UC San Diego.
Sources
QS World University Rankings, www.topuniversities.com
John Willingham - John Willingham is a regular contributor to the History News Network (HNN.us). His novel The Edge of Freedom is about the Texas ...
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