ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities 2021 Press Release

Sunday, August 15, 2021

From: Shanghai, People's Republic of China

The 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) is released today by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. Since 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world's 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, more than 2000 institutions were scrutinized, and the best 1000 universities in the world are published.

Harvard University tops the ranking list for the 19th year. Stanford University and the University of Cambridge remain at the No. 2 and No. 3 seats. Other Top 10 universities are MIT (4th), Berkeley (5th), Princeton (6th), Oxford (7th), Columbia (8th), Caltech (9th), and Chicago (10th).

In Continental Europe, Paris-Saclay University (13th) rises one position, remaining at the best position, followed by ETH Zurich (21th). Among Asian universities, The University of Tokyo (24th) keeps its leading position. Tsinghua University (28th) moves up one position, holding on to the second-best place in Asia. The University of Melbourne (33th) tops of other universities in Oceania for eleven consecutive years since 2011.

Two European universities move up into the Top 50. The University of Munich from Germany ranked 48th, up from 51st last year, and Utrecht University from Netherlands rises two places to 50th. Three universities enter into the Top 100 list, including Sun Yat-sen University (89th) from Chinese Mainland, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (90th), and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (94th) from Israel. Sun Yat-sen University has made the first-ever appearances in the Top 100. There are seven new entrants from Asia and Oceania appearing on the Top 500 list. 38 universities enter into Top 1000 for the first time.

TOP 100 Universities in ARWU 2021

2021 Rank	2020 Rank	Institution	Country/Region
1	1	Harvard University	United States
2	2	Stanford University	United States
3	3	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
4	4	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	United States
5	5	University of California, Berkeley	United States
6	6	Princeton University	United States
7	9	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
8	7	Columbia University	United States
9	8	California Institute of Technology	United States
10	10	University of Chicago	United States
11	11	Yale University	United States
12	12	Cornell University	United States
13	14	Paris-Saclay University	France
14	13	University of California, Los Angeles	United States
15	19	University of Pennsylvania	United States
16	15	Johns Hopkins University	United States
17	16	University College London	United Kingdom
18	18	University of California, San Diego	United States
19	16	University of Washington	United States
20	21	University of California, San Francisco	United States
21	20	ETH Zurich	Switzerland
22	23	University of Toronto	Canada
23	23	Washington University in St. Louis	United States
24	26	The University of Tokyo	Japan
25	25	Imperial College London	United Kingdom
26	22	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor	United States
27	27	New York University	United States
28	29	Tsinghua University	China
29	30	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	United States
30	33	University of Copenhagen	Denmark
31	32	University of Wisconsin - Madison	United States
32	27	Duke University	United States
33	35	The University of Melbourne	Australia
34	30	Northwestern University	United States
35	39	Sorbonne University	France
35	36	The University of Manchester	United Kingdom
37	34	Kyoto University	Japan
38	36	PSL University	France
38	42	The University of Edinburgh	United Kingdom
40	40	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	United States
41	41	The University of Texas at Austin	United States
42	45	Karolinska Institute	Sweden
42	43	Rockefeller University	United States
42	38	University of British Columbia	Canada
45	49	Peking University	China
46	44	University of Colorado at Boulder	United States
47	47	King's College London	United Kingdom
48	48	The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas	United States
48	51	University of Munich	Germany
50	52	Utrecht University	Netherlands
51	54	The University of Queensland	Australia
52	54	Technical University of Munich	Germany
52	58	Zhejiang University	China
54	56	University of Zurich	Switzerland
55	45	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	United States
56	53	University of Maryland, College Park	United States
57	57	Heidelberg University	Germany
57	49	University of California, Santa Barbara	United States
59	63	Shanghai Jiao Tong University	China
60	59	University of Geneva	Switzerland
61	60	University of Oslo	Norway
61	61	University of Southern California	United States
63	73	University of Science and Technology of China	China
64	69	University of Groningen	Netherlands
65	74	The University of New South Wales	Australia
65	62	Vanderbilt University	United States
67	78	McGill University	Canada
67	67	The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center	United States
69	74	University of Sydney	Australia
70	69	University of California, Irvine	United States
71	69	Aarhus University	Denmark
71	66	Ghent University	Belgium
73	65	University of Paris	France
74	69	Stockholm University	Sweden
75	80	National University of Singapore	Singapore
76	67	The Australian National University	Australia
77	100	Fudan University	China
78	64	University of Bristol	United Kingdom
78	77	Uppsala University	Sweden
80	85	Monash University	Australia
81	91	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore
82	74	University of Helsinki	Finland
83	80	Leiden University	Netherlands
84	83	Nagoya University	Japan
84	87	University of Bonn	Germany
86	79	Purdue University - West Lafayette	United States
87	97	KU Leuven	Belgium
87	88	University of Basel	Switzerland
89	101-150	Sun Yat-sen University	China
90	101-150	The Hebrew University of Jerusalem	Israel
91	83	Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne	Switzerland
92	98	McMaster University	Canada
92	93	Weizmann Institute of Science	Israel
94	101-150	Technion-Israel Institute of Technology	Israel
95	90	Boston University	United States
96	85	The University of Western Australia	Australia
97	95	Carnegie Mellon University	United States
97	93	Moscow State University	Russia
97	88	University of Florida	United States
100	91	University of California, Davis	United States

Universities from the United States dominate this year’s Top 1000 list with 40 universities among the Top 100, 129 among the Top 500, and 200 among the Top 1000. The United Kingdom has 65 Top 1000 universities, and 38 of them are listed in the Top 500, 8 are listed in the Top 100.

Germany has four universities ranked in the Top 100, namely the University of Munich (LMU Munich, 48th), Technical University of Munich (TUM, 52th), Heidelberg University (Heidelberg, 57th), and University of Bonn (Bonn, 84th). It is worth mentioning that LMU Munich, TUM, and Heidelberg have been selected as Universities of Excellence under the Excellence Initiative since 2006/2007, and Bonn was selected first time as Universities of Excellence in 2019.

French universities maintain their competitive performance in this year’s league table, 30 of which are ranked in the Top 1000, 17 universities are ranked in the Top 500. Under the Initiatives of Excellence (Initiatives D’Excellence), Paris-Saclay (13th), Sorbonne (35th), PSL (38th), and University of Paris (73th) hold four positions in the Top 100.

China has 180 universities ranked in the Top 1000, including 84 Top 500 universities, 7 Top 100 universities. The number of universities from Chinese Mainland continues to grow. Most of the listed universities are supported by the “Double World-Class Project” (World-Class Universities and World-Class Subjects Project).

The complete list and detailed methodologies can be found at ShanghaiRanking’s website www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2021.

Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU): Starting from 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world's 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, and Clarivate data including the number of Highly Cited Researchers™, articles indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded™ and Social Sciences Citation Index™ 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.