Following the publication of the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2021, the University of Cambridge was named the third best university in the world and the best in the United Kingdom.
Other UK universities in the top 25 included:
- the University of Oxford (7th)
- University College London (17th)
- and Imperial College London (25th)
The Universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, King’s College London, and Bristol all made the top 80.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities was established in 2003, and it ranks global universities based on six indicators, including the number of alumni and staff who have received Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of highly cited researchers chosen by Clarivate Analytics, and the number of articles published in the journals Nature and Science. There are 1,200 universities ranked in total, with the top 500 published.
