Universities from the United States dominate the ARWU 2018 Top 500 list, followed by China with 62 universities and the UK with 39 universities
Philadelphia, USA, August 15, 2018 – The 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) is released today by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. Since 2003, every year ARWU has been presenting the world’s Top 500 universities based on Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index data from Clarivate Analytics, as well as data from other third parties. ARWU is recognized as a leader of global university rankings.
ARWU adopts six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of Highly Cited Researchers representing some of the world’s most influential minds as determined by a citation analysis of Web of Science data from Clarivate Analytics. Close to 1,500 universities are ranked by ARWU every year. This year the list of World Top 500 Candidates is extended to cover all universities ranked in the Top 1,000. Harvard University tops the ranking list for the 16th year running. Stanford University and the University of Cambridge remain at second and third respectively.
“Hundreds of universities around the world have announced their plans to become global leaders and become known as World-Class Universities,” said Dr. Cheng Ying, Founder & CEO of ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. “As part of our six objective indicators for ARWU, the citation indexes from Clarivate Analytics continue to help us identify those universities with the potential to compete at a global level.”
David Liu, Managing Director, APAC, Clarivate Analytics explained:
“Trusted by more than 20 million users worldwide, our research analytics tools and data power the most prestigious university and academic rankings globally. We highly value our partnership with ShanghaiRanking Consultancy and look forward to continuing our partnership with their teams.”
The United States and China are the two biggest hosts of Top 500 Candidates; the United States has 139 and China has 62 universities listed. The United States has eight universities among the Top 10, 46 among the Top 100 and 139 among the Top 500. There are three universities from China in the Top 100. The United Kingdom has 39 Top 500 universities, and eight of them are also listed in Top 100.
TOP 20 Universities in ARWU 2018
| Rank 2018 | Rank 2017 | Institution | Country |
| 1 | 1 | Harvard University | United States |
| 2 | 2 | Stanford University | United States |
| 3 | 3 | University of Cambridge | United Kingdom |
| 4 | 4 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | United States |
| 5 | 5 | University of California, Berkeley | United States |
| 6 | 6 | Princeton University | United States |
| 7 | 7 | University of Oxford | United Kingdom |
| 8 | 8 | Columbia University | United States |
| 9 | 9 | California Institute of Technology | United States |
| 10 | 10 | University of Chicago | United States |
| 11 | 12 | University of California, Los Angeles | United States |
| 12 | 14 | Cornell University | United States |
| 12 | 11 | Yale University | United States |
| 14 | 13 | University of Washington | United States |
| 15 | 15 | University of California, San Diego | United States |
| 16 | 17 | University of Pennsylvania | United States |
| 17 | 16 | University College London | United Kingdom |
| 18 | 18 | Johns Hopkins University | United States |
| 19 | 19 | Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich | Switzerland |
| 20 | 20 | Washington University in St. Louis | United States |
The complete list and detailed methodologies can be found at ShanghaiRanking’s website http://www.ShanghaiRanking.com/.
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Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)
Since from 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world’s Top 500 universities annually based on a set of objective indicators and third-party data. ARWU has been recognized as the precursor of global university rankings and the most trustworthy league table. ARWU adopts six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of Highly Cited Researchers, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance. About 1,500 universities are ranked by ARWU every year and the best 500 universities are published. In 2018, those universities ranked between 501 and 1,000 in the world are also published.
ShanghaiRanking Consultancy
ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is a fully independent organization dedicating to research on higher education intelligence and consultation. It has been the official publisher of the Academic Ranking of World Universities since 2009. Visit http://www.ShanghaiRanking.com/
About Highly Cited Researchers
The list of Highly Cited Researchers names the most frequently cited researchers as determined by the extent to which their papers, as indexed in the Web of Science, have supported, influenced, inspired and challenged other researchers around the globe.
About Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index
The Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) are part of the Web of Science Core Collection, the world’s oldest and largest publisher-neutral citation index, powering global discovery and citation analytics across the sciences, social sciences and art & humanities.
Clarivate Analytics
Clarivate Analytics is the global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics to accelerate the pace of innovation. Building on a heritage going back more than a century and a half, we have built some of the most trusted brands across the innovation lifecycle, including the Web of Science, Cortellis, Derwent, CompuMark, MarkMonitor and Techstreet. Today, Clarivate Analytics is a new and independent company on a bold entrepreneurial mission, to help our clients radically reduce the time from new ideas to life-changing innovations. For more information, please visit clarivate.com.
