U.S. News & World Report Ranks Stanford Among Best In World

PALO ALTO, CA -- U.S. News & World Report has ranked California universities among the best on Earth -- and Stanford University was rated third best. The 5th annual rankings were released on Tuesday and compared 1,250 schools across 75 countries. The United States dominated the list with 227 schools making the list.

The private institution based in Palo Alto was founded in 1885. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 7,062, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 8,180 acres. It utilizes a quarter-based academic calendar. Stanford University's tuition and fees are $51,354 (2018-19).

Four of Stanford University’s seven schools offer undergraduate and graduate coursework, and the remaining three serve as purely graduate schools. Graduate programs include the highly ranked School of Education, School of Engineering, School of Law, School of Medicine and Graduate School of Business.

Notable Stanford alumni include former U.S. President Herbert Hoover, Hall of Fame NFL quarterback John Elway, actress Sigourney Weaver and golfer Tiger Woods, who played collegiately at Stanford, the news magazine added.

Stanford is among other notable California universities -- with U.C. Berkeley following on its coat tails at No. 4 followed by Cal Tech Pasadena.

"We encourage students to research colleges and universities to determine what institution might be the best fit for their educational objectives," Stanford spokesman Ernest Miranda said.

The United States boasted four of the top five spots in the global rankings — Harvard University ranked No. 1 — and eight of the top 10. Massachusetts was home to the top two in the world while California boasted three of the top six universities including Stanford.

Across the 22 subject rankings, which evaluate the humanities, applied sciences, mathematics and more, Harvard ranked No. 1 in 10 subjects — more than any other school, the news outlet said.

Here are the country’s top 10 universities and their global ranks:

1. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (1)
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (2)
3. Stanford University, Stanford, CA (3)
4. University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (4)
5. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA (6)
6. Columbia University, New York, NY (8)
7. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (9)
8. University of Washington, Seattle, WA (10)
9. Yale University, New Haven, CT (11)
10. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (12)

China had the second most institutions on the list with 130, followed by the United Kingdom with 78, Japan with 67, and Germany with 62. Three of the top 10 schools in engineering and four of the top 10 schools in computer science were based in China, including Tsinghua University, which ranked No. 1 in both subjects.

However, the U.S. performed among the best in four subjects: neuroscience and behavior, economics and business, computer science and engineering.

“When we first started publishing Best Global Universities, the rankings evaluated 500 schools in 11 countries,” Robert Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News, said in a release. “Since then, we’ve added 750 schools and have expanded to 75 nations. One thing has remained the same: Schools that prioritize quality academic research remain at the top of the rankings.”

A pool of 1,372 universities were evaluated for the global rankings, which focused on academic research and reputation rather than their separate undergraduate or graduate programs. Thirteen separate ranking factors were used to determine the rankings, specifically: indicators that measure a school’s reputation and so-called bibliometric indicators that measure academic research performance, including citations and publications.
Click here to read more on the methodology.

--Image via Shutterstock; Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.