The definitive ranking of the 30 best universities in the world

Erin Lorelie Young

Picking the right university is one of the first big decisions of adulthood.

To help, QS has ranked universities since 2013 using a methodology that evaluates academic reputation, employer reputation, student to faculty ratio as well as international reputation.

Using a points system, QS then rates the university out of 100.

The latest rankings were published on Tuesday and can be found on the QS website.

It hasn’t been a great year for British universities. Thirty eight of the UK’s 48 universities in top 400 have dropped down the rankings this year, with Cambridge falling out of the top three.

Political uncertainty over immigration reform and problems with long-term funding, could have affected the UK universities’ performance, said Ben Sowter, head of research at QS, according to a report in The Telegraph.

Most of the top 30 are in the US, but here’s the definitive ranking:

30. McGill University, Canada: overall rating – 84.1

29. University of Manchester, UK: overall rating – 84.8

28. University of California, Berkeley, USA: overall rating – 85.2

27. University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong: overall rating – 85.4

26. Northwestern University, USA: overall rating – 85.7

24=. Duke University, USA: overall rating – 86

24=. Tsinghua University, China: overall rating – 86

23. University of Michigan, USA: overall rating – 86.4

22. The Australian National University, Australia: overall rating – 87.3

21. King’s College London, UK: overall rating – 87.7

20. Columbia University, USA: overall rating – 88.6

19. University of Edinburgh, USA: overall rating – 88.9

18. University of Pennsylvania, USA: overall rating – 89

17. John Hopkins University, USA: overall rating – 89.3

16. Cornell University, USA: overall rating – 90.1

15. Yale University, USA: overall rating – 90.9

14. Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland: overall rating – 91.1

13. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore: overall rating – 91.4

12. National University of Singapore, Singapore: overall rating – 91.5

11. Princeton University, USA: overall rating – 92.8

10. University of Chicago, USA: overall rating – 93

9. Imperial College London, UK: overall rating – 94.1

8. ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland: overall rating – 94.2

7. University College London, UK: overall rating – 95.6

6. University of Oxford, UK: overall rating – 96.8

5. California Institute of Technology (CalTech), USA: overall rating – 96.9

4. University of Cambridge, UK: overall rating – 97.2

3. Harvard University, USA: overall rating – 98.3

2. Stanford University, USA: overall rating – 98.7

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA: overall rating – 100

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