The world's best university is ...

Shanghai Jiao Tong releases its list of 500 world-beaters. Does your school make the cut?

The 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities says Harvard University is the best in the world. U.S. colleges account for nearly half of the top 100.

The Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (CWCU) announced its 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) this week, surprising no one with its placement of Harvard at the top of the heap for the ninth consecutive year.

Rounding out a prestigious top three, Stanford and MIT grab second and third on the ladder, respectively.
The list, also dubbed the Shanghai Ranking, first appeared in 2003 and evaluates universities on six indicators, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of researchers cited by Thomson Scientific and the volume of articles published in academic journals.

American domination

U.S. universities account for eight of the top 10 and almost half of the top 100. Cambridge University in the United Kingdom is rated the best of the European universities, coming in fifth. Near-neighbor Oxford scrapes into the top ten in last place.
Switzerland's ETH Zürich leads the Continental European universities in 23rd place, followed by Paris-Sud (40th) and Pierre and Marie Curie (41st), both in France.

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Three colleges are ranked among top 100 for the first time in the history of ARWU: University of Geneva (73rd), University of Queensland (88th) and University of Frankfurt (100th).
The best-ranked universities in Asia are University of Tokyo (21st) and Kyoto University (27th) in Japan.

China rising

A total of 35 Chinese universities, including seven in Taiwan and five in Hong Kong SAR, make the top 500. National Taiwan University beats all Chinese universities and is ranked in the 101-150 bracket.
Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tsinghua University are ranked between 150 and 200, with the latter being the best mainland China university.

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According to "Shanghai Daily," the universities outside the top 100 don’t have a precise rank because the differences between them are minor.

Breaking it down

Here are the world’s 10 best universities on the Shanghai Ranking:

1. Harvard University


2. Stanford University


3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)


4. University of California, Berkeley


5. University of Cambridge


6. California Institute of Technology


7. Princeton University


8. Columbia University


9. University of Chicago


10. University of Oxford

CWCU also ranks universities by broad subject field and by specific subject field.
The world’s top five universities by broad subject field are:

• Natural Sciences and Mathematics -- Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton, Caltech and Cambridge


• Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences -- MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, UIUC and Georgia Tech


• Life and Agriculture Sciences -- Harvard, MIT, UC San Francisco, Cambridge and Washington (Seattle)


• Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy -- Harvard, UC San Francisco, Washington (Seattle), Johns Hopkins and Columbia


• Social Sciences -- Harvard, Chicago, MIT, Berkeley and Columbia

The top five universities in the world by specific subject field are:

• Mathematics -- Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford and Cambridge


• Physics -- MIT, Harvard, Caltech,Princeton and Berkeley


• Chemistry -- Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Cambridge and ETH Zurich


• Computer Science -- Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Princeton and Harvard


• Economics/Business -- Harvard, Chicago, MIT, Berkeley and Columbia

Shanghai Ranking’s website has a complete list of the world’s best 500 universities.