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ShanghaiRanking's Academic Ranking of World Universities 2020 Press Release

Saturday, August 15, 2020
From: Shanghai, People's Republic of China

The 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) is released today by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. Since 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world top universities annually based on transparent methodology and objective third-party data. It has been recognized as the precursor of global university rankings and the most trustworthy one. This year, the best 1000 universities in the world are published.

Harvard University tops the ranking list for the 18th year. Stanford University and the University of Cambridge remain to be the No. 2 and No. 3 respectively. Other Top 10 universities are MIT(4th), Berkeley(5th), Princeton(6th), Columbia(7th), Caltech(8th) Oxford(9th) and Chicago(10th). In Continental Europe, Paris-Saclay University(14th) becomes the best at its first appearance in ARWU, followed by ETH Zurich(20th). The University of Tokyo(26th) keeps its leading position in Asia, and Tsinghua University(29th) overtakes Kyoto University(34th), becoming the second best among Asian universities. The University of Melbourne(35th) tops other universities in Oceania.

Six universities make their first-ever appearances in the Top 100, including four French ones, namely Paris-Saclay University(14th), PSL University(36th), University of Paris(65th) and Université Grenoble Alpes(99th), and two Chinese ones, namely the University of Science and Technology of China(73th) and Fudan University(100th). Beijing Jiaotong University and other 14 universities enter into the Top 500 list for the first time. More than 40 universities enter into Top 1000 list for the first time.

Universities from the United States dominate this year's Top 1000 list with 8 universities among the Top 10, 41 among the Top 100, 133 among the Top 500 and 206 among the Top 1000. China has 168 universities ranked in the Top 1000, among which 81 are in the Top 500, 6 are in the Top 100. United Kingdom has 65 Top 1000 universities, and 36 of them are listed in the Top 500, 8 are listed in the Top 100.

The complete list and detailed methodologies can be found at ShanghaiRanking's website www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2020.

Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU): Starting from 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world top universities annually based on a set of objective indicators and third-party data. ARWU has been recognized as the precursor of global university rankings and the most trustworthy league table. ARWU adopts six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, the number of Highly Cited Researchers and articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index based on data in the Web of Science, and per capita performance. More than 2000 universities are ranked by ARWU every year and the best 1000 universities are published.

ShanghaiRanking Consultancy: ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is a fully independent organization dedicating to research on higher education intelligence and consultation. It has been the official publisher of the Academic Ranking of World Universities since 2009.