Campus & community, Campus news

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

For the eighth straight year, the campus takes the top spot among publics worldwide

a person speaks at the podium
(UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser)

For the eighth straight year, UC Berkeley tops the list of the world’s best public universities and remains the fourth-best university overall in U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 global universities rankings.

As they did last year, Harvard, MIT and Stanford University have claimed the top three spots among private and public universities globally. Rounding out the top 10 are the United Kingdom’s University of Oxford, Columbia University, the University of Washington, the U.K.’s University of Cambridge, and the California Institute of Technology tied with Johns Hopkins University.

After UC Berkeley, the world’s top 10 publics are the University of Washington in seventh place overall, UCSF (11th), UCLA (14th), University College London tied with the University of Toronto (16th), the University of Michigan (19th), Imperial College London (20th), UC San Diego (21st) and Australia’s University of Melbourne (25th)

Among both public and privates, UCSF moved up four spots from 15th to 11th place. In the top 100 overall, UC Davis tied with UC Santa Barbara in 67th place followed by UC Irvine in 86th place.

The U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 best global universities rankings, issued today, Oct. 26, evaluated more than 1,700 universities around the world from more than 90 countries on academic research performance and global and regional reputation.

On a scale of zero to 100, Berkeley’s global score this year is 89.4. The campus placed fifth for its global research standing and third for its regional research reputation.

Among other indicators, U.S. News & World Report’s global rankings evaluate universities on publications, books, conferences, cited papers and international collaboration.

Across 34 subject ratings, UC Berkeley ranked second in chemistry; third in space science and in economics and business; fourth in physics, in plant and animal science and in environment/ecology; sixth in mathematics, in biology and biochemistry and in computer science; seventh in optics, in engineering and in civil engineering; eighth in biotechnology and applied microbiology and in materials science; ninth in geosciences and 10th in microbiology and in arts and humanities.

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

View the complete list of US News global rankings

View the UC Berkeley specific rankings