Top 100 universities in the world revealed

Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London all make the top 10 in this year's World University Rankings

British universities have been named the best in the world for a second year running, this time boasting the two top positions in the prestigious World University Rankings.

Oxford University is ranked in first place in this year’s table, after beating US champion the California Institute of Technology for the first time last year.

An even greater achievement, arguably, was seen by rival Cambridge this year, as the institution jumped from fourth place up to second thanks to a perceived improvement in research quality.

It’s the first time in the 13-year history of the rankings that two European institutions take the top two spots.

Switzerland’s ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) also clings onto a spot in the top 10, after dropping one place from ninth to joint 10th. Meanwhile, Trinity College Dublin has jumped 14 places to 117th this year.

Italy and Spain both have new number ones thanks to large rises for two of their institutions: Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and Pompeu Fabra University.

But the rise of Asia is becoming an increasing threat to Europe’s standing in the rankings, its authors said.

China’s two leading universities now outrank Germany’s top institution, LMU Munich.

Germany also has two fewer institutions in the top 200; of the 20 institutions that still make this cohort, 12 have slipped.

Tsinghua University has also overtaken Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and Peking University now outranks the Karolinska Institute and is on a par with the University of Edinburgh.

Europe now has seven institutions in the top 30 while Asia has three. Last year these figures were 10 and two respectively.

Phil Baty, editorial director of the global rankings, said: “Europe is one of the leading regions in the THE World University Rankings and is now home to more than half of the top-200 spots (101 compared to 99 last year).

“The University of Cambridge’s rise to second place, in particular, is a fantastic achievement, while other improvements show the strength of the region amid increasing global competition.

“But there are signs that Asia is starting to threaten the position of some of Europe’s leading institutions, while Brexit poses a huge risk to the success of UK universities in the future. Europe will need to work hard to ensure it can sustain its performance in future years.”

The rankings, devised annually by Times Higher Education, judge research-intensive universities across all their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

The top 100 universities in full

Rank 2018	Previous year	Institution	Country
1	1	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
2	4	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
3	2	California Institute of Technology	United States
3	3	Stanford University	United States
5	5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States
6	6	Harvard University	United States
7	7	Princeton University	United States
8	8	Imperial College London	United Kingdom
9	10	University of Chicago	United States
10	9	ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich	Switzerland
10	13	University of Pennsylvania	United States
12	12	Yale University	United States
13	17	Johns Hopkins University	United States
14	16	Columbia University	United States
15	14	University of California, Los Angeles	United States
16	15	University College London	United Kingdom
17	18	Duke University	United States
18	10	University of California, Berkeley	United States
19	19	Cornell University	United States
20	20	Northwestern University	United States
21	21	University of Michigan	United States
22	24	National University of Singapore	Singapore
22	22	University of Toronto	Canada
24	23	Carnegie Mellon University	United States
25	25	London School of Economics and Political Science	United Kingdom
25	25	University of Washington	United States
27	27	University of Edinburgh	United Kingdom
27	32	New York University	United States
27	29	Peking University	China
30	35	Tsinghua University	China
31	41	University of California, San Diego	United States
32	33	University of Melbourne	Australia
33	33	Georgia Institute of Technology	United States
34	36	University of British Columbia	Canada
34	30	LMU Munich	Germany
36	36	King’s College London	United Kingdom
37	36	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	United States
38	30	École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	Switzerland
38	28	Karolinska Institute	Sweden
40	43	University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
41	46	Technical University of Munich	Germany
42	42	McGill University	Canada
43	45	University of Wisconsin-Madison	United States
44	49	Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	Hong Kong
45	43	Heidelberg University	Germany
46	39	University of Tokyo	Japan
47	40	KU Leuven	Belgium
48	47	Australian National University	Australia
49	50	University of Texas at Austin	United States
50	51	Brown University	United States
50	57	Washington University in St Louis	United States
52	54	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore
53	48	University of California, Santa Barbara	United States
54	51	University of California, Davis	United States
54	55	University of Manchester	United Kingdom
56	53	University of Minnesota	United States
56	56	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	United States
58	76	Chinese University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
59	63	University of Amsterdam	Netherlands
60	70	Purdue University	United States
61	60	University of Sydney	Australia
62	57	Humboldt University of Berlin	Germany
63	59	Delft University of Technology	Netherlands
64	65	Wageningen University & Research	Netherlands
65	60	University of Queensland	Australia
66	60	University of Southern California	United States
67	77	Leiden University	Netherlands
68	86	Utrecht University	Netherlands
69	67	University of Maryland, College Park	United States
70	64	Boston University	United States
70	72	Ohio State University	United States
72	69	Erasmus University Rotterdam	Netherlands
72	NR	Paris Sciences et Lettres – PSL Research University Paris	France
74	91	Kyoto University	Japan
74	72	Seoul National University	South Korea
76	71	University of Bristol	United Kingdom
77	68	Pennsylvania State University	United States
78	113	McMaster University	Canada
79	78	RWTH Aachen University	Germany
80	88	University of Glasgow	United Kingdom
80	74	Monash University	Australia
82	95	University of Freiburg	Germany
83	80	University of Groningen	Netherlands
83	101	Michigan State University	United States
85	78	University of New South Wales	Australia
86	87	Rice University	United States
86	93	Uppsala University	Sweden
88	75	Free University of Berlin	Germany
89	82	Dartmouth College	United States
90	91	University of Helsinki	Finland
91	82	University of Warwick	United Kingdom
92	82	Technical University of Berlin	Germany
93	96	Lund University	Sweden
94	89	University of Tübingen	Germany
95	98	University of Basel	Switzerland
95	89	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)	South Korea
97	96	Durham University	United Kingdom
98	82	Emory University	United States
99	98	University of California, Irvine	United States
100	113	University of Bonn	Germany
100	116	University of Colorado Boulder	United States
100	80	University of Pittsburgh	United States