Top 30 Global Research Universities of 2025

The 30 top global research universities of 2025, ranked by US News, based on output, citations, collaboration, and reputation.

David Yi

18 Jul 2025

Explore the World's Best Universities for Research, Innovation, and Academic Excellence

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

19 of the top 30 are US-based institutions.
UCSF is uniquely graduate-only and focused solely on health/biomedical sciences.
Ranking by US News & World Report.
Analyzed over 2,250 global universities across 105 countries.
Scores are based on 13 indicators, including research reputation, citations, output, top 1% paper citations, and international collaboration.

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