This week, ShanghaiRanking Consultancy released the much-anticipated 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).
Every year since 2003, ARWU has ranked universities around the globe “based on transparent methodology and objective third-party data.” ARWU ranks more than 2,000 universities each year and publishes a list of the top 1,000 institutions.
To arrive at its results, ARWU uses six objective indicators, including:
- The number of alumni and faculty awarded Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
- The number of articles published in nature and science journals
- The number of Highly Cited Researchers and articles indexed in the Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index based on data in the Web of Science
- Per capita academic performance
ApplyBoard Partner Universities
ApplyBoard wants to congratulate all of our partner universities in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States who made the list! An impressive 73 of them were included, and we’re extremely proud to work with each of them to help educate the world!
Canada
- McGill University
- University of Waterloo
- Queen’s University
- Western University
- University of Guelph
- University of Manitoba
- University of Saskatchewan
- University of Victoria
- York University
- Memorial University of Newfoundland
- University of Regina
- Ontario Tech University
- Lakehead University
- Ryerson University
United Kingdom
- University of Liverpool
- The University of Reading
- University of Surrey
- University of Strathclyde
- Loughborough University
- Swansea University
- Nottingham Trent University
- Royal Holloway, University of London
- University of Greenwich
- University of Hertfordshire
- Coventry University
United States
- Johns Hopkins University
- University of California, Irvine
- Arizona State University
- University of Arizona
- University of Utah
- Texas A&M University
- University of California, Santa Cruz
- Colorado State University
- George Mason University
- Northeastern University – Boston
- Oregon State University
- University of California, Riverside
- University of Colorado – Denver
- University of Delaware
- University of Illinois at Chicago
- University of Kansas
- University of South Florida
- Louisiana State University
- University of Alabama – Birmingham
- University of Central Florida
- University of South Carolina
- University of Vermont
- Washington State University
- Florida International University
- Saint Louis University
- Auburn University
- Baylor University
- Kent State University
- Northern Arizona University
- University of Idaho
- University of Montana
- Montana State University
- University of Massachusetts Boston
Top 50 Universities for 2020
Here are the top 50 universities in the 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities. Universities within the same rank range are listed alphabetically.
For the complete list of the top 1,000 universities and more information on the methodologies ShanghaiConsultancy uses to rank them, please click here.
| 2020 Ranking | 2019 Ranking | University | Country |
| 1 | 1 | Harvard University | USA |
| 2 | 2 | Stanford University | USA |
| 3 | 3 | University of Cambridge | UK |
| 4 | 4 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | USA |
| 5 | 5 | University of California, Berkeley | USA |
| 6 | 6 | Princeton University | USA |
| 7 | 8 | Columbia University | USA |
| 8 | 9 | California Institute of Technology | USA |
| 9 | 7 | University of Oxford | UK |
| 10 | 10 | University of Chicago | USA |
| 11 | 11 | Yale University | USA |
| 12 | 13 | Cornell University | USA |
| 13 | 11 | University of California, Los Angeles | USA |
| 14 | – | Paris-Saclay University | France |
| 15 | 16 | Johns Hopkins University | USA |
| 16 | 15 | University College London | UK |
| 16 | 14 | University of Washington | USA |
| 18 | 18 | University of California, San Diego | USA |
| 19 | 17 | University of Pennsylvania | USA |
| 20 | 19 | ETH Zurich | Switzerland |
| 21 | 20 | University of California, San Francisco | USA |
| 22 | 20 | University of Michigan – Ann Arbor | USA |
| 23 | 24 | University of Toronto | Canada |
| 23 | 22 | Washington University in St. Louis | USA |
| 25 | 23 | Imperial College London | UK |
| 26 | 25 | The University of Tokyo | Japan |
| 27 | 28 | Duke University | USA |
| 27 | 30 | New York University | USA |
| 29 | 43 | Tsinghua University | China |
| 30 | 29 | Northwestern University | USA |
| 30 | 33 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | USA |
| 32 | 27 | University of Wisconsin – Madison | USA |
| 33 | 26 | University of Copenhagen | Denmark |
| 34 | 32 | Kyoto University | Japan |
| 35 | 41 | The University of Melbourne | Australia |
| 36 | – | PSL University | France |
| 36 | 33 | The University of Manchester | UK |
| 38 | 35 | University of British Columbia | Canada |
| 39 | 44 | Sorbonne University | France |
| 40 | 41 | University of Minnesota, Twin Cities | USA |
| 41 | 45 | The University of Texas at Austin | USA |
| 42 | 31 | The University of Edinburgh | UK |
| 43 | 35 | Rockefeller University | USA |
| 44 | 38 | University of Colorado at Boulder | USA |
| 45 | 38 | Karolinska Institute | Sweden |
| 45 | 38 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | USA |
| 47 | 51 | King’s College London | UK |
| 48 | 49 | The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas | USA |
| 49 | 53 | Peking University | China |
| 49 | 48 | University of California, Santa Barbara | USA |
Ready to start your own study abroad journey? Explore top schools on ApplyBoard.
