2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU), Graduate School of Education (formerly the Institute of Higher Education) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and updated on an annual basis. Since 2009 the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is a fully independent organization on higher education intelligence and not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies. ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded™ and Social Sciences Citation Index™ in the Web of Science™, and per capita performance of a university. More than 2500 universities are actually ranked by ARWU every year and the best 1000 are published.(Methodology)

Academic Ranking of World Universities

1000 Institutions

World Rank	Institution	National/Regional Rank	Total Score	Alumni Award HiCi N&S PUB PCP
1	Harvard University Harvard University	1	100.0	100.0
2	Stanford University Stanford University	2	75.9	45.0
3	University of Cambridge University of Cambridge	1	70.6	78.8
4	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	3	69.5	71.6
5	University of California, Berkeley University of California, Berkeley	4	66.0	63.8
6	Princeton University Princeton University	5	59.7	58.0
7	University of Oxford University of Oxford	2	59.2	48.0
8	Columbia University Columbia University	6	58.0	58.5
9	California Institute of Technology California Institute of Technology	7	57.9	53.9
10	University of Chicago University of Chicago	8	54.7	57.7
11	Yale University Yale University	9	53.6	48.3
12	Cornell University Cornell University	10	50.3	41.7
13	Paris-Saclay University Paris-Saclay University	1	49.4	27.9
14	University of California, Los Angeles University of California, Los Angeles	11	48.9	27.2
15	University of Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania	12	47.8	32.9
16	Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University	13	47.6	37.7
17	University College London University College London	3	47.3	27.7
18	University of California, San Diego University of California, San Diego	14	46.3	18.5
19	University of Washington University of Washington	15	46.2	23.3
20	University of California, San Francisco University of California, San Francisco	16	44.6	0.0
21	ETH Zurich ETH Zurich	1	44.4	27.2
22	University of Toronto University of Toronto	1	41.3	16.9
23	Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis	17	40.7	21.4
24	The University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo	1	40.6	35.8
25	Imperial College London Imperial College London	4	40.5	13.1
26	University of Michigan - Ann Arbor University of Michigan - Ann Arbor	18	40.1	34.6
27	New York University New York University	19	39.6	27.2
28	Tsinghua University Tsinghua University	1	39.5	9.2
29	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	20	38.1	7.5
30	University of Copenhagen University of Copenhagen	1	37.7	19.2

* Institutions within the same rank range are listed alphabetically.

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Methodology-ShanghaiRanking's Academic Ranking of World Universities 2020