Top 10 of the World's Best Universities by Times Higher Education
 |
| Top 10 Best Universities In The World Today |
Our top ten list is based on Times Higher Education rankings (October 2024 updated ). Times Higher Education ranks universities around the world using metrics from five categories: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry innovations, and international outlook.
Whereas many popular U.S.-based college rankings consider factors such as financial aid and social atmosphere, these global rankings focus on academic rigor.
Top 10 Most Prestigious Universities In The World Today
1. University of Oxford — Oxford, United Kingdom
Address: University Offices, Wellington Square, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX1 2JD, United Kingdom
10.9: Number of students per staff member
Number of Full-Time Equivalent Students: 21,750
International students account for 42% of all students.
The oldest university in the English-speaking world is the University of Oxford. It is also the second oldest university that is still in existence. The exact date it opened is unknown, but there is proof that teaching started as early as 1096.
The university is in and around Oxford's medieval city center. It has over 100 libraries, making it the largest library system in the UK. It has 44 colleges and halls.
There are about 22,000 students in total. A little more than half are first-year college students, and more than 40% are international students from 140 different countries.
Oxford, which was called the "city of dreaming spires" by the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold, has the youngest population of any city in England and Wales. Almost a quarter of its residents are college students, which gives the city a noticeable buzz.
Over 250,000 people have graduated from Oxford. Among them are more than 30 modern world leaders, 26 UK Prime Ministers, more than 120 Olympic medalists, and 26 Nobel Prize winners and poet laureates.
READ MORE: Top 20 Most Prestigious Public Colleges 2024 by US News & World Report
2. Stanford University — Stanford, California, United States
Address: 450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA
14,517 Full-Time Equivalent Students
International students account for 23% of the total.
Out-of-state Tuition and Fees: $53,529
Room and Board on campus costs $16,433.
Salary after ten years: $88,567
Stanford University is one of the most prestigious universities in the world, with one of the largest campuses in the United States.
It was founded in 1885 and opened six years later as a private co-educational and non-denominational institution.
Its location, less than an hour south of San Francisco, next to Palo Alto, puts it in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, and the university is known for its entrepreneurial spirit.
This entrepreneurialism has its origins in the postwar period, when the provost encouraged innovation, resulting in a self-sufficient industry that became Silicon Valley.
By 1970, the university had developed a linear accelerator and hosted a portion of the early network that would serve as the technical foundation for the internet.
The main campus covers 8,180 acres and is home to nearly all of the university's undergraduate students.
There are 700 major university buildings that house 40 departments across three academic schools and four professional schools, as well as 18 independent laboratories, centers, and institutes.
READ MORE: Top 20+ Most Useless University Degrees With Uncertain Future
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Address: 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139-4307, USA
8.0: Number of students per faculty member
33%: International Student Percentage
Out-of-state Tuition and Fees: $53,790
Salary after ten years: $96,033.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that is private and not part of any other school.
In 1861, MIT was created with the mission of "furthering knowledge and preparing students in science, technology, and other fields of study that will best benefit the nation and the world today." Its motto is "Mind and Hand," which is Latin for "Mind and Hand."
There are 85 Nobel Prize winners, 58 National Medal of Science winners, 29 National Medal of Technology and Innovation winners, and 45 MacArthur Fellows at the university. One of its famous graduates is Kofi Annan, who used to be Secretary-General of the UN.
It was at MIT that penicillin was first chemically synthesized. MIT also invented radar, quarks were found, and magnetic core memory, which made it possible for digital computers to be made.
MIT has five schools right now: science, engineering, architecture and planning, and the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
4. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Address: Massachusetts Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
International students make up 25% of the student body.
Number of Full-Time Equivalent Students: 20,050
Out-of-state Tuition and Fees: $51,925
Salary after ten years: $92,033.
Harvard University, founded in 1636, is the oldest and most prestigious US university.
John Harvard, its first benefactor, left the institution his library and half of his estate in 1638, hence its name.
Over 45 Nobel laureates, 30 heads of state, and 48 Pulitzer Prize winners are alumni of the private Ivy League school. Over 323,000 alumni live, with 271,000 in the US and nearly 52,000 in 201 countries. The institution has awarded honorary degrees to thirteen US presidents, most recently John F. Kennedy in 1956.
Chemicalist Martin Karplus and economist Alvin Roth are recent Nobel laureates, while former US Vice President Al Gore, who won the 2007 Peace Prize, and poet Seamus Heaney, who taught at Harvard from 1981 to 1997, are alumni.
Harvard's 5,000-acre campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has 12 degree-granting schools, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, two theaters, and five museums. It houses the world's largest academic library with 20.4 million volumes, 180,000 serial titles, 400 million manuscripts, 10 million photographs, 124 million archived web pages, and 5.4 terabytes of born-digital archives and manuscripts.
5. Cambridge University — Cambridge, United Kingdom
 |
| Cambridge University - Most Prestigious Universities In The World |
Address: The Old Schools, Trinity Lane, CB2 1TN, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
International students account for 38% of the total.
Number of Full-Time Equivalent Students: 20,565
There are more than 18,000 students from all over the world and many different cultures at Cambridge. It has almost 4,000 international students from more than 120 countries. Also, students from over 50 countries can take 150 courses at the university's International Summer Schools.
The university is split into 31 separate colleges. Each college offers college supervisions, which are small group lessons for students.
The university's colleges are spread out over six schools, which are home to about 150 faculties and other institutions. The six schools are: Technology and the Physical Sciences, Clinician Medicine, Arts and Humanities, Biological Sciences, and Biological Sciences.
Many of Cambridge's older colleges are on or near the river Cam, and the campus is right in the middle of the city.
In total, 92 university affiliates have received Nobel Prizes in various categories.
The endowment of the university is nearly £6 billion.
 Top 20 Best Universities In The US 2023/2024 By US News and QS Rankings US is home to a large number of top universities in the world. KnowInsiders have summarized a list of top 20 best universities in the ... |
6. Princeton University - New Jersey, USA
Address: Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, United States of America
International students account for 23% of the total.
7,753 Full-Time Equivalent Students
Out-of-state Tuition and Fees: $52,800
Salary after ten years: $77,700
For all four years of study, the Ivy League school, known for its teaching, houses 98% of undergraduates on campus.
It has fewer than 10,000 students, with 12% international undergraduates.
Princeton, a top research university, has produced more than 40 Nobel laureates, 17 National Medal of Science winners, and five National Humanities Medalists.
Princeton, one of the world's top ten universities, is known for its park-like campus and landmark buildings designed by famous architects. For instance, the Frank Gehry-designed Lewis Library houses many university science collections. The McCarter Theatre Center won a Tony for best regional theatre in the US.
About 180 buildings on 500 acres make up Princeton's campus, including 10 libraries with 14 million volumes. Visitors love it, with 800,000 visiting its open campus annually and pulling in $2 billion.
7. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
 |
| California Institute of Technology |
Address: 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
33%: International Student Percentage
The number of FTE students is 2,240.
Out-of-state Tuition and Fees: $54,600
Salary after ten years: $79,300
It has six academic divisions, and science and technology-related teaching and research are given a lot of attention. There is a competitive admissions process at the university that only lets in the smartest students.
Caltech does a lot of research and has a lot of great facilities on campus and around the world. This includes the International Observatory Network, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Caltech Seismological Laboratory.
There are 39 Nobel Prizes, one Fields Medal, six Turing Awards, and 71 US National Medals of Science or Technology that have been given to Caltech alumni and faculty. Four chief scientists from the US Air Force have also been to the school.
The campus is in Pasadena, California, which is about 11 km from the center of Los Angeles. In honor of nature's engineer, the school's mascot is a beaver.
8. Imperial College London — London, United Kingdom
Address: South Kensington Road, SW7 2AZ, Kensington, London, United Kingdom
Number of Full-Time Equivalent Students: 20,275
61%: International Student Percentage
One of the UK's top science schools is Imperial College London in the capital.
The college emphasizes science, engineering, medicine, and business with 15,000 students and 8,000 employees.
Prince Albert wanted South Kensington to be a hub for education, with colleges alongside the Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Science Museum.
The Royal College of Science, Royal School of Mines, and City and Guilds College merged to form Imperial in 1907.
Penicillin discoverer Sir Alexander Fleming is among 14 Nobel Prize winners.
Famed alumni include science fiction author H.G. Wells, Queen guitarist Brian May, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, former UK chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson, and former Singapore Airlines CEO Chew Choon Seng.
"Scientific knowledge, the crowning glory and the safeguard of the empire," is the college's motto.
The Imperial Institute's Queen's Tower was built to commemorate Queen Victoria's 1887 Golden Jubilee.
9.The University of California, Berkeley — Berkeley, California, USA
Address: 110 Sproul Hall, Berkeley, California 94704, USA
22%: International Student Percentage
Out-of-state Tuition and Fees: $44,007
Salary after ten years: $62,433.
The university is located in the San Francisco Bay Area and has approximately 27,000 undergraduate and 10,000 postgraduate students.
Berkeley faculty members have received 19 Nobel Prizes, the majority of which have been awarded in physics, chemistry, and economics. Recent winners include Saul Perlmutter, who won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for leading a team that discovered the universe's accelerating expansion, implying the existence of a type of dark energy that accounts for 75% of the universe, and George Akerlof, who won the 2001 Prize in Economics for demonstrating how markets fail when buyers and sellers have different information.
Novelist and journalist Jack London, Oscar-winning actor Gregory Peck, former Prime Minister and President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, author Joan Didion, and Women's World Cup-winning US footballer Alex Morgan are among the notable alumni.
Berkeley has a long history of political activism. During the 1960s and 1970s, the campus was a hotbed of anti-Vietnam War student protests.
 Top 20 Best Universities For Social Mobility & Disadvantaged Students in the U.S The top 20 universities in America (2024) are most successful in promoting social mobility by enrolling and graduating a large proportion of disadvantaged students who ... |
10. Yale University - New Haven, Connecticut, United States
Address: 06520 New Haven, Connecticut, United States
The number of full-time equivalent students is 11,924.
Out-of-state Tuition and Fees: $55,500
Salary after ten years: $80,200
 |
| Yale University |
Yale University is the third-oldest higher education institution in the United States and a private Ivy League research university.
In 1701, Yale University opened in Saybrook, Connecticut, as the Collegiate School. Fifteen years later, it moved to New Haven.
It was changed to Yale College in 1718 to honor the Welsh philanthropist Elihu Yale. In 1861, it was the first university in the US to give out a PhD.
The main campus of Yale is spread out over 260 acres in New Haven and has buildings that were built in the middle of the 1800s.
The university is made up of 14 schools. Before choosing a departmental major, students follow a liberal arts curriculum that includes arts and humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Students are also taught how to write, do math, and speak other languages.
In a move that is very different for the US, Yale students live in residential colleges that look like the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. There are 12 historic colleges, and in 2014, work began on two more.
Five students out of every hundred are from outside the United States, and more than half of all first-year students get scholarships or grants from their schools.
The complete list of the world's best universities 2024 by Times Higher Education
1.Oxford University — Oxford, United Kingdom
2.Stanford University is located in Stanford, California, in the United States.
3.Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA — Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4.Harvard University is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States.
5.Cambridge University — Cambridge, United Kingdom
6.Princeton University is located in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
7.California Institute of Technology (Caltech) — Pasadena, California, USA
8.Imperial College London is located in London, England.
9.Berkeley, California, USA — University of California, Berkeley
10.Yale University is located in New Haven, Connecticut, in the United States.
11.Zurich, Switzerland ETH Zurich
12.Tsinghua University is located in Beijing, China.
13.The University of Chicago — Chicago, Illinois
14.Peking University is located in Beijing, China.
15.Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA
16.University of Pennsylvania — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
17.Columbia University is located in New York, New York.
18.University of California, Los Angeles — Los Angeles, California, U.S.
19.Singapore: National University of Singapore
20.Cornell University is located in Ithaca, New York.
Conclusion
Studying Abroad has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry, providing massive amounts of employment, running economies, and, most importantly, fostering a healthy exchange of knowledge. Today, countries are bending entry laws, implementing student-friendly policies, and, most importantly, allowing international students a fair chance of finding work through their post-study visa has only aided the cause.
Candidates who wish to study abroad are only concerned with themselves. Today, we bring the best universities in the world to our students for higher education. You can visit each of the best universities listed above to learn more about the university, the courses available, the duration of the course, admission and eligibility requirements, and the most recent living and tuition fee structure.
 Interesting Facts 40 Women Colleges in the U.S Today There are just over 40 women colleges in the U.S. today. Check out Top 10 best women colleges and the full list of women's current ... |
 Top 10+ Cheapest Universities in Australia for International Students Colleges and universities in Australia are popular study destinations for students from all over the world. However, high tuition and other costs pose significant challenges. ... |
 Top 10 Most Prestigious Universities in Australia by QS World Rankings 2024 Explore the most prestigious universities in Australia based on the QS World University Rankings 2024. |
