The World's Top Universities

Several US universities with pharmacy schools are ranked in the annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).

The ARWU was created by researchers at the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The center’s goal is to “build databases of major research universities in the world and clearinghouse of literature on world-class universities,” according to its website.

The first ranking of universities on a global scale was published in 2003, and since then, Harvard University has ranked No. 1 each time.

ARWU uses several factors to rank universities, including:

1. Number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals

2. Number of highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Reuters

3. Number of articles published in the journals Nature and Science

4. Number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index — Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index

5. Per capita performance

ARWU ranks 1200 universities but only publishes the top 500.

For 2015, 16 of the top universities in the world are from the Americas and 4 are from Europe. Looking at the top 500 schools, however, Europe has more top universities than the Americas.

The top 500 is made up of 176 schools in the Americas, 205 in Europe, 114 in the Asia/Pacific area, and 5 in Africa. The United States has 146 universities in the top 500 list.

The following is a list of the top 50 US schools included on ARWU’s list. The 16 universities with pharmacy schools have an asterisk.

US Rank

University

World Rank

1

Harvard University

1

2

Stanford University

2

3

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

3

4

University of California, Berkeley

4

5

Princeton University

6

6

California Institute of Technology

7

7

Columbia University

8

8

University of Chicago

9

9

Yale University

11

10

University of California, Los Angeles

12

11

Cornell University

13

12

University of California, San Diego*

14

13

University of Washington*

15

14

Johns Hopkins University

16

15

University of Pennsylvania

17

16

University of California, San Francisco*

18

17

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor*

22

18

University of Wisconsin - Madison*

24

19

New York University

27

19

Northwestern University

27

21

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

29

22

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities*

30

23

Duke University

31

24

Washington University in St. Louis

32

25

Rockefeller University

33

26

University of Colorado at Boulder

34

27

The University of Texas at Austin*

37

28

University of California, Santa Barbara

38

29

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill*

39

30

University of Maryland, College Park

43

31

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

44

32

University of Southern California*

49

33

University of California, Irvine

50

34

Vanderbilt University

53

35

University of California, Davis

57

36

Pennsylvania State University - University Park

60

37

Carnegie Mellon University

61

37

Purdue University - West Lafayette*

61

39

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick*

64

40

The Ohio State University - Columbus*

67

41

University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Campus*

70

42

Boston University

73

43

Brown University

75

44

University of Florida*

83

45

Rice University

84

46

University of Arizona*

90

47

Arizona State University

93

47

University of California, Santa Cruz

93

47

University of Utah*

93

50

Michigan State University

99