Harvard University come 1st in Times World Reputation Rankings 2015

Harvard first in Times World Reputation Rankings

Harvard University have been named the most prestigious university in the world in the 2015 instalment of Times Higher Education’s World Reputation Rankings.

The world-leading Massachusetts university – which boasts alumni like Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy and Natalie Portman – retains the top spot for the 5^th year in a row (in fact Harvard has come top every year in the rankings’ short history). Harvard came 2^nd in Times’ World University Rankings for 2014-2015 last October.

Meanwhile the UK’s premiere institutions Cambridge (2^nd) and Oxford (3^rd) have pushed MIT and Stanford into 4^th and 5^th place.

The rankings have quickly attracted widespread acclaim as a measure of university prestige, itself a major factor for universities in attracting the top academic talent to both teach and study with them. Investment and partnerships also come about from a university’s reputation.

The US and UK dominate the top 10. Harvard is the leader of 6 “super-brand” universities whose reputations stand head and shoulders above the rest. This elite group include Cambridge, Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (4^th), Stanford University (5^th) and the University of California, Berkley (6^th). Meanwhile American institutions make up 43 of the top 100, while British institutions follow making up 12 of the top 100.

The results come from an invitation-only opinion poll taken by 10,507 responses from 150 countries.

Phil Baty spoke on the UK’s strong year amidst the country’s upcoming general election:

‘It is clear from this latest research that the UK is punching well above its weight in higher education globally with many of the most prestigious universities in the world – real jewels in the UK’s crown. But these incredibly valuable assets need to be carefully protected. As we head towards a general election we need a clear vision for how their future funding will be protected as other nations invest heavily in their top universities and increase spending on research.’

Other highlights:

Germany remains the third best-represented nation in the list, with six top 100 universities led by Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Russia gained a new top-100 institution in St Petersburg while its national flagship, Lomonosov Moscow State University jumping from the 51-60 band into 25^th place
Asia’s number one performer is the University of Tokyo, slipping one place to 12^th in the world
China gained much ground with its top institution, Tsinghua University rising ten places to 26^th
London and Paris are the world cities with the highest number of top ranked universities this year

Full Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings 2015

2015 reputation rank	Institution	Country / region
1	Harvard University	United States
2	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
3	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
4	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States
5	Stanford University	United States
6	University of California, Berkeley	United States
7	Princeton University	United States
8	Yale University	United States
9	California Institute of Technology	United States
10	Columbia University	United States
11	University of Chicago	United States
12	University of Tokyo	Japan
13	University of California, Los Angeles	United States
14	Imperial College London	United Kingdom
15	ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich	Switzerland
16	University of Toronto	Canada
17	University College London	United Kingdom
18	Johns Hopkins University	United States
19	University of Michigan	United States
20	Cornell University	United States
20	New York University	United States
22	London School of Economics and Political Science	United Kingdom
23	University of Pennsylvania	United States
24	National University of Singapore	Singapore
25	Lomonosov Moscow State University	Russian Federation
26	Tsinghua University	China
27	Kyoto University	Japan
28	Carnegie Mellon University	United States
29	University of Edinburgh	United Kingdom
30	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	United States
31	King’s College London	United Kingdom
32	Peking University	China
33	University of Washington	United States
34	Duke University	United States
35	Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich	Germany
35	McGill University	Canada
37	University of British Columbia	Canada
38	University of California, San Francisco	United States
38	Heidelberg University	Germany
38	University of Wisconsin-Madison	United States
41	University of California, San Diego	United States
41	Humboldt University of Berlin	Germany
41	University of Melbourne	Australia
44	University of California, Davis	United States
45	Karolinska Institute	Sweden
46	University of Texas at Austin	United States
47	Northwestern University	United States
48	École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	Switzerland
49	Georgia Institute of Technology	United States
50	University of Manchester	United Kingdom
51-60	University of Amsterdam	Netherlands
	Australian National University	Australia
	Delft University of Technology	Netherlands
	Free University of Berlin	Germany
	University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
	Katholieke Universiteit Leuven	Belgium
	Panthéon-Sorbonne University – Paris 1	France
	Paris-Sorbonne University – Paris 4	France
	University of São Paulo	Brazil
	Seoul National University	Republic of Korea
	University of Sydney	Australia
61-70	University of California, Santa Barbara	United States
	École Normale Supérieure	France
	Leiden University	Netherlands
	National Taiwan University	Taiwan
	University of North Carolina*	United States
	Pennsylvania State University	United States
	University of Southern California	United States
	Technical University of Munich	Germany
	Wageningen University and Research Center	Netherlands
71-80	Boston University	United States
	Brown University	United States
	Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	Hong Kong
	Michigan State University	United States
	University of Minnesota	United States
	National Autonomous University of Mexico	Mexico
	University of Pittsburgh	United States
	Purdue University	United States
	Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey	United States
	Utrecht University	Netherlands
81-90	University of Copenhagen	Denmark
	Durham University	United Kingdom
	University of Helsinki	Finland
	Ohio State University	United States
	University of Queensland	Australia
	Saint Petersburg State University	Russian Federation
	Texas A&M University	United States
	University of Warwick	United Kingdom
	Washington University in St Louis	United States
	Uppsala University	Sweden
91-100	University of Bristol	United Kingdom
	École Polytechnique	France
	London Business School	United Kingdom
	University of Maryland, College Park	United States
	University of Massachusetts	United States
	Mayo Medical School	United States
	Monash University	Australia
	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore
	Pasteur Institute	France
	RWTH Aachen University	Germany

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Harvard University come 1st in Times World Reputation Rankings 2015

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