California schools quietly dominated a major global rankings list

California universities scored some of the highest marks worldwide in a new U.S. News & World Report ranking of colleges and universities released on Monday.

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The global rankings, typically released in June each year, are different from the national rankings because they use a different methodology. The 2026-2027 list ranked 2,250 universities across 105 countries, with the largest share of each school’s score based on its research reputation, scholarly publications and how frequently its research is cited. (The national rankings, released in the fall, prioritize different factors, such as graduation and retention rates, student debt, peer assessments and career outcomes.) 

The publication ranked Harvard University as the top institution globally. Harvard also claimed the title of the oldest higher education institution in the U.S. Rounding out the top five (in order) were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. 

Stanford University retained the same spot it reached on last year’s list, and it received high rankings for several of its programs. The university was ranked No. 1 for mathematics; No. 2 for economics and business, psychiatry/psychology, immunology, and radiology, nuclear medicine and medical imaging; and No. 3 for biology and biochemistry, cell biology, clinical medicine, neuroscience and behavior, and optics. Stanford was also the third-best university for its global research reputation and the No. 4 university for the “number of highly cited papers that are among the top 1% most cited.”

Rival UC Berkeley fell one slot from last year, now ranking No. 7 overall behind Tsinghua University in Beijing and ahead of Yale University (No. 8), University College London (No. 9) and Columbia University (No. 10). The second California school in the top 10, UC Berkeley maintained its spot on the global list as the best public school in the U.S. Berkeley also was ranked sixth for its global research reputation and was recognized for several subjects, including physics at No. 3 and biology and biochemistry, economics and business, and environment/ecology at No. 4. 

UCLA, the next California school on the list, ranked No. 11 globally, rising two spots from last year’s No. 13 ranking. 

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Besides UCLA and UC Berkeley, there were also several other California schools that dominated the top 25 global rankings this year, including UC San Francisco coming in at No. 22. That’s several slots down compared with last year, when it ranked No. 16 in a four-way tie with Cornell University, Princeton University, the University of Toronto and the National University of Singapore. 

The California Institute of Technology and UC San Diego were the only other schools to land in the top 25 this year in a tie for the No. 23 slot. The California Institute of Technology matched its spot from last year, while UC San Diego went two steps down from last year’s No. 21 ranking, which was a tie with the University of Michigan.

And several other California schools, mostly from the UC system, were able to secure a spot in the top 100. The next California schools on the list were the University of Southern California at No. 74, a tie with Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China; UC Davis at No. 95, UC Irvine at No. 99; and UC Santa Barbara at No. 100.