U.S. News: These MA Universities Are Among The World's Best

Don't get a big head, Harvard and MIT. The Cambridge schools that routinely top state and national rankings just found a new global list to lead.

New rankings from U.S. News & World Report evaluated the top universities in the world based on academic research and reputation. Harvard and MIT took the top two spots in 2020’s best global universities.

According to the rankings, eight of the world’s top 10 best universities are in the United States. Overall, 249 schools in the United States — the most of any country — made the list, including 11 schools in Massachusetts. The list evaluates 1,500 schools across the globe on academic research and reputation.

The global rankings differ from U.S. News’ rankings of the best colleges and best graduate schools. The publication explains that no data from either of those two lists factors in compiling the global university rankings.

Harvard ranked No. 1 on the list, followed by the MIT, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

U.S. News stresses that the newly released rankings specifically focus on academic research and overall reputation of the schools and not on the undergraduate and graduate programs. In the global rankings, schools are also assessed in subjects like business, economics, engineering and computer science. The individual subject rankings are intended to measure a school’s global position in a field.

The Massachusetts colleges on U.S. News’ list, with their U.S. and global rankings, are:

• Harvard (U.S. 1; Global 1)
• MIT (U.S. 2; Global 2)
• BU (U.S. 30; Global 51)
• UMass (U.S. 55; Global 136)
• Tufts (U.S. 66; Global 190)
• Northeastern (U.S. 69; Global 200)
• Brandeis (U.S. 78; Global 250)
• UMass-Boston (U.S. 136; Global 528)
• BC (U.S. 138; Global 536)
• WPI (U.S. 210; Global 1,003)
• UMass-Lowell (U.S. 215; Global 1,053)

“As the Best Global Universities rankings continue to expand in number of schools and subjects to fulfill the needs of prospective students, we remain consistent in our mission to evaluate schools around the world on their research,” Robert Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News, said in a press release. “A major emphasis on academic research is what sets this methodology apart from our other university rankings.”

See all of 2020’s top global universities via U.S. News & World Report.