Ranked: The World’s 30 Top Research Universities

Kayla Zhu
2025-07-17 08:12:00
www.visualcapitalist.com

The World’s Top Research Universities 2025

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While some universities are best known for their undergraduate programs or vibrant campus life, others stand out for their research excellence and international academic reputation.

This chart shows the top global research universities, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report.

What is the Top Research University in the World?

Below, we show the top 30 global research universities of 2025 and their overall score.

Rank	University	Country	Global Score
1	Harvard University	U.S.	100.0
2	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	U.S.	97.2
3	Stanford University	U.S.	94.5
4	University of Oxford	UK	88.3
5	University of Cambridge	UK	86.8
6	University of California Berkeley	U.S.	86.4
7	University College London	UK	86.2
8	University of Washington Seattle	U.S.	86.1
9	Yale University	U.S.	86.0
10	Columbia University	U.S.	85.8
11	Imperial College London	UK	85.2
11	Tsinghua University	China	85.2
13	University of California Los Angeles	U.S.	84.9
14	Johns Hopkins University	U.S.	84.4
15	University of Pennsylvania	U.S.	84.0
16	Cornell University	U.S.	83.6
16	Princeton University	U.S.	83.6
16	University of California San Francisco	U.S.	83.6
16	University of Toronto	Canada	83.6
20	National University of Singapore	Singapore	83.3
21	University of California San Diego	U.S.	83.2
21	University of Michigan	U.S.	83.2
23	California Institute of Technology	U.S.	82.9
24	Northwestern University	U.S.	81.5
25	Peking University	China	81.1
26	University of Chicago	U.S.	81.0
27	Duke University	U.S.	80.7
28	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore	80.6
29	University of Sydney	Australia	79.9
30	University of Melbourne	Australia	79.8

Harvard topped the list as the best research university in the world with a perfect score of 100.

It ranked first overall for a number of metrics, including global research reputation, publications, total citations, and number of publications that are among the top 10% most cited.

The world-renowned university has one of the largest endowment funds in the United States.

Harvard has also recently made headlines for being hit by sweeping cuts from the Trump administration, including the cancellation of approximately $100 million in federal contracts, the freezing of around $2.3 billion in research grants, and the revocation of its ability to host international students.

Overall, U.S. universities make up 19 of the top 30 global research universities, followed by four UK universities. The U.S. consistently is home to many of the world’s top universities overall.

University of California, San Francisco is the only exclusively graduate-level institution in the top 30, focused solely on health and biomedical sciences.

Methodology

The U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities rankings includes 2,250 research universities across 105 countries, based on 13 research metrics, and an Academic Reputation Survey. You can read more about their methodology here.

The 13 indicators are listed below (weight in brackets):

• Global research reputation (12.5%)
• Regional research reputation (12.5%)
• Publications (10%)
• Books (2.5%)
• Conferences (2.5%)
• Normalized citation impact (10%)
• Total citations (7.5%)
• Number of publications that are among the 10% most cited (12.5%)
• Percentage of total publications that are among the 10% most cited (10%)
• International collaboration – relative to country (5%)
• International collaboration (5%)
• Number of highly cited papers that are among the top 1% most cited in their respective field (5%)
• Percentage of total publications that are among the top 1% most highly cited papers (5%)

Learn More on the Voronoi App

To learn more about top universities, check out this graphic that visualizes America’s top universities.

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