EDUCATIONEdition of forty
The 40 Best Universities in the World, Ranked
Research firepower, teaching quality, graduate outcomes and global reputation, blended into one editorial index — and carried to forty, where the truly interesting institutions live.
- 4 minutes
- 40 entries
Who is holding the top
- Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUnited States
- University of OxfordUnited Kingdom
- Stanford UniversityUnited States
- ranked seats
- 40ranked seats
- on the podium
- 3on the podium
THE LONG-FORM INDEX
A great university is judged by what its graduates go on to build.
Prestige compounds, so we discount it deliberately. What moves a seat here is research that changes a field, teaching students actually rate, and outcomes that hold up a decade after graduation.
What moves a seat
- Research output and citation weight
- Teaching quality as students report it
- Graduate outcomes ten years on
- Global reach and access
The Long-Form Index
All forty seats.
Scored out of 10
01 — 03
The Podium
The three that define the field.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The benchmark for science and engineering, and still the most productive campus per square metre on Earth.
University of Oxford
Eight centuries of scholarship with a research engine firmly in the present tense.
Stanford University
The university that keeps rewriting what a university is for.
04 — 10
The Vanguard Ten
World-class by any measure.
Harvard University
Unmatched depth across every faculty, and the endowment to keep it there.
United States · breadth & law
University of Cambridge
Mathematics and natural sciences at a standard that sets everyone else's curriculum.
United Kingdom · sciences
California Institute of Technology
Tiny, ferocious, and responsible for a startling share of physics.
United States · physics & space
ETH Zurich
Continental Europe's engineering standard-bearer, and remarkably accessible.
Switzerland · engineering
Imperial College London
Science, engineering and medicine, run with an unusually industrial focus.
United Kingdom · applied science
National University of Singapore
Asia's most complete research university, and a genuinely global campus.
Singapore · Asia-Pacific research
University of Chicago
Where economics arguments are settled and then reopened.
United States · economics & theory
11 — 25
The Field
Serious, established, still climbing.
Princeton University
United StatesUndergraduate teaching taken more seriously than almost anywhere.
Best for undergraduate focus
Yale University
United StatesThe humanities and law faculties others quietly measure themselves against.
Best for law & humanities
Peking University
ChinaChina's intellectual centre of gravity, with research output to match.
Best for policy & sciences
Tsinghua University
ChinaAn engineering powerhouse now competing at the very top globally.
Best for engineering
University of Tokyo
JapanJapan's flagship, and a research base of extraordinary consistency.
Best for research depth
Cornell University
United StatesIvy breadth with a genuinely applied, land-grant temperament.
Best for agriculture & CS
Johns Hopkins University
United StatesThe medical research institution the rest of medicine cites.
Best for medicine & public health
University of Pennsylvania
United StatesWharton casts a long shadow, but the medical school is the quiet giant.
Best for business & medicine
Columbia University
United StatesNew York as a campus, journalism and climate research as calling cards.
Best for journalism & climate
UC Berkeley
United StatesThe best public university anywhere, and it is not particularly close.
Best for public research
University of Toronto
CanadaCanada's research leader with formidable range across every faculty.
Best for breadth & research
EPFL
SwitzerlandLausanne's technical institute, punching miles above its size in robotics and AI.
Best for robotics & AI
University of Michigan
United StatesEnormous, excellent, and the most complete public campus experience in America.
Best for breadth & campus life
UCLA
United StatesThe most applied-to university on the planet, and the outcomes justify it.
Best for arts & medicine
University of Edinburgh
United KingdomInformatics, medicine and philosophy, in a city built for thinking.
Best for informatics
26 — 40
The Long List
Where the forty earns its length.
LSE
United KingdomSocial science at the highest level, and a rolodex to match.
Best for economics & politics
KAIST
South KoreaKorea's engineering accelerator, tightly coupled to real industry.
Best for engineering & industry
Technical University of Munich
GermanyGerman engineering rigour with an unusually entrepreneurial streak.
Best for engineering
Sorbonne University
FranceParis's scholarly centre, still setting the terms in mathematics.
Best for mathematics
University of Melbourne
AustraliaAustralia's research leader and its most internationally connected campus.
Best for research & medicine
Duke University
United StatesMedicine, policy and an unusually collegial research culture.
Best for medicine & policy
Northwestern University
United StatesJournalism, materials science and a stubborn interdisciplinary streak.
Best for journalism & materials
University of Hong Kong
Hong KongA genuine bridge between Chinese and Western scholarship.
Best for law & medicine
McGill University
CanadaMontreal's bilingual research heavyweight with global medical standing.
Best for medicine
Delft University of Technology
NetherlandsWhere applied engineering and design are treated as one discipline.
Best for design engineering
Seoul National University
South KoreaKorea's flagship, and its most reliable pipeline into national leadership.
Best for breadth
Kyoto University
JapanJapan's most independent-minded campus, and a Nobel factory for it.
Best for fundamental science
Indian Institute of Science
IndiaIndia's research summit, with a materials and computing record to prove it.
Best for science & computing
University of Copenhagen
DenmarkLife sciences and climate research at a scale Denmark has no business having.
Best for life sciences
University of São Paulo
BrazilLatin America's research anchor and its most influential campus by far.
Best for Latin American research