The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025 have been released. The ranking judges research-intensive universities based on metrics regarding teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook. The first place is held by the University of Oxford, UK, for the ninth consecutive year, beating the previous record held by Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, which held the top spot for eight years in a row. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA, has moved up to second place in this year’s ranking and is now the highest-ranked U.S. institution. Harvard University came in third this year.

The top 20 are mostly dominated by US and UK universities. The top institution based in continental Europe is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, in 11th place, and the top Asian university is Tsinghua University, China, in 12th place, followed by Peking University, China, in 13th place, and the National University of Singapore at rank 17.

 

20 Highest Ranked Institutions

Rank	Institution	Country	Score
1	University of Oxford	UK	98.5
2	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	USA	98.1
3	Harvard University	USA	97.7
4	Princeton University	USA	97.5
5	University of Cambridge	UK	97.4
6	Stanford University	USA	97.2
7	California Institute of Technology (Caltech)	USA	96.3
8	University of California, Berkeley	USA	94.5
9	Imperial College London	UK	94.4
10	Yale University	USA	94.1
11	ETH Zurich	Switzerland	93.0
12	Tsinghua University	China	92.5
13	Peking University	China	92.0
14	The University of Chicago	USA	90.9
14	University of Pennsylvania	USA	90.9
16	Johns Hopkins University	USA	90.7
17	National University of Singapore (NUS)	Singapore	89.9
18	Columbia University	USA	89.8
18	University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)	USA	89.8
20	Cornell University	USA	89.2

 

Methodology

The Times Higher Education university ranking uses 18 performance indicators, grouped into five areas:

• Teaching (29.5 % of the overall score)
• Research environment (29 %)
• Research quality (30 %)
• International outlook (7.5 %)
• Industry (4 %)

Institutions provide and sign off their institutional data for use in the rankings. Bibliometric and patent data is supplied by Elsevier. The perceived reputation of institutions in teaching and research is evaluated using an annual survey.

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• Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025