Campus & community, Campus news

UC Berkeley still No.1 public, fourth best globally in U.S. News rankings

By Yasmin Anwar

Blue and gold lights lights on doe library
To honor the Class of 2020, many campus buildings, including Doe Library, will glow with blue and gold lights, starting the night of Friday, May 15, through Saturday. (Photo by Keegan Houser)
Blue and gold lights lights on doe library

Doe Library lit up in blue and gold. The Berkeley campus remains the No. 1 public university, according to U.S. News & World Report global rankings. (UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser)

UC Berkeley remains the world’s top public and fourth best university overall in the latest global rankings by U.S. News & World Report.

As it did last year, Berkeley came in fourth among public and private universities, preceded by Harvard, MIT and Stanford, with the UK’s University of Oxford rounding out the top five.

Columbia University came in sixth, the California Institute of Technology, seventh, followed by the University of Washington, the University of Cambridge and Johns Hopkins University finishing out the top 10.

Two other UC campuses made the top 20, with UCLA moving up to 13th place and UCSF staying in 15th place.

The U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 rankings , issued this week, evaluated 1,500 universities across 86 countries using 13 indicators that include published academic research and global and regional reputation.

On a scale of zero to 100, Berkeley’s global score this year is 89.8. The campus placed fifth for its global research standing and fourth for its regional research reputation.

Across 31 subject ratings, Berkeley ranked first in chemistry; third in biotechnology and applied microbiology, environment/ecology, economics and business, space science and in physics; fourth in civil engineering and in plant and animal science; and fifth in biology and biochemistry and in computer science.

Each October, U.S. News & World Report issues its global university rankings, not to be confused with the national university rankings announced each September .