League tables rank universities on a wide variety of factors. This list from the 2025 QS World University Rankings is based on six criteria: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, international student ratio and international faculty ratio.
For several years now, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology near Boston has been named the best university in the world. The Anglo-American world dominates the top of the list, with eight out of the top ten universities being either in the USA or the United Kingdom — only ETH Zurich and the National University of Singapore are represented in the top ten outside of these two countries. The cities with the most universities on the list are Hong Kong (5) and London (4).
We also have an article on the best universities in the world for different subjects if you’re interested in finding out which institutions are best for your area of focus.
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA
The perennial number 1 on this list, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the Boston metropolitan area. MIT is especially well-known for its strong programs in fields such as engineering and computer science, but it is also among the world’s best universities in areas like linguistics and accounting.
2. Imperial College London, UK
The highest-rated of the four London universities on this list, Imperial focuses on science, technology, business and medicine.
3. University of Oxford, UK
The oldest university on this list, the University of Oxford is the second-oldest university in the world in continuous operation and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Oxford is the home of the world-famous Rhodes Scholarship and the Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world.
4. Harvard University, USA
Funnily enough, of the five best universities in the world, three are located in a city named Cambridge. Like MIT, Harvard is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts near Boston. Part of the prestigious Ivy League, Harvard is the oldest university in the United States.
5. University of Cambridge, UK
Pipped this year by Oxford, the University of Cambridge offers the highest quality of education in a wide range of subjects, being among the best universities in the world in fields such as arts & humanities, engineering and history.
6. Stanford University, USA
Leland Stanford Junior University, or just Stanford University for short, is located in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Being among the best universities in the world in many disciplines, the university is affectionately nicknamed Nerd Nation.
7. ETH Zurich, Switzerland
ETH Zurich is the only university in the top 10 from mainland Europe. It has particularly strong programs in science and technology.
8. National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
The National University of Singapore has climbed the world rankings steadily in recent years and has now broken into the top 10.
9. University College London (UCL), UK
University College London offers world-class education in a great location, with the university’s campus being in Bloomsbury in central London.
10. California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA
Caltech is especially well known for its programs in the natural sciences, and for being the university where the main characters in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory work.
11. University of Pennsylvania, USA
12. University of California, Berkeley, USA
13. University of Melbourne, Australia
14. Peking University, China
15. Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore
16. Cornell University, USA
17. University of Hong Kong, China
18. University of Sydney, Australia
19. University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), Australia
20. Tsinghua University, China
21. University of Chicago, USA
22. Princeton University, USA
23. Yale University, USA
24. Université PSL, France
25. University of Toronto, Canada
26. École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
27. University of Edinburgh, UK
28. Technical University of Munich, Germany
29. McGill University, Canada
30. Australian National University, Australia
31. Seoul National University, South Korea
=32. Johns Hopkins University, USA
=32. University of Tokyo, Japan
=34. Columbia University, USA
=34. University of Manchester, UK
36. Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
37. Monash University, Australia
38. University of British Columbia, Canada
39. Fudan University, China
=40. King’s College London, UK
=40. University of Queensland, Australia
42. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA
43. New York University (NUY), USA
44. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (UMich), USA
45. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
46. Polytechnic Institute of Paris, France
47. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
China
48. Zhejian University, China
49. Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
50. Kyoto University, Japan
51. Northwestern University, USA
52. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK
53. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea
54. University of Bristol, UK
55. University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
56. Yonsei University, South Korea
57. Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China
58. Carnegie Mellon University, USA
59. Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany
60. University of Malaya (UM), Malaysia
61. Duke University, USA
62. City University of Hong Kong, China
=63. KU Leuven, Netherlands
=63. Sorbonne University, France
65. University of Auckland, New Zealand
66. University of Texas at Austin, USA
67. Korea University, South Korea
68. National Taiwan University (NTU), Taiwan
=69. University of Warwick, UK
=69. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
71. University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina
72. University of California, San Diego, USA
73. Paris-Saclay University, France
74. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
75. Lund University, Sweden
76. University of Washington, USA
77. University of Western Australia, Australia
78. University of Glasgow, UK
79. Brown University, USA
=80. University of Birmingham, UK
=80. University of Southampton, UK
=82. University of Adelaide, Australia
=82. University of Leeds, UK
=84. Heidelberg University, Germany
=84. Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
86. Osaka University, Japan
87. Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
88. University of Technology Sydney, Australia
=89. Durham University, UK
=89. Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), USA
=89. Purdue University, USA
92. University of São Paulo, Brazil
93. Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile
94. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
95. National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico
96. University of Alberta, Canada
97. Free University of Berlin, Germany
98. Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), South Korea
99. RWTH Aachen University, Germany
100. University of Copenhagen, Denmark
The two dominant forces in the list are the Anglo-American countries and East Asia. More than a quarter (27) of the universities in the top 100 are in the United States, while the United Kingdom has 17 universities on the list. In Asia, China tops the list, followed by South Korea and Japan.
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