Harvard has once again been named the world 's top university , beating Cambridge and Oxford in the Times Higher Education Reputation Rankings . This is the fifth year in a row that Harvard has ranked number one . The U.S. has 43 colleges in the list of the top 100 universities in the world it has been revealed , far outstripping the U.K. with 12 , and Germany with six . American institutions take up eight of the top ten positions , with Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ) and Stanford rounding out the top five . Scroll down for video . Top : Harvard , the oldest academic institute in the U.S. , dating from 1636 , was named number one again . University of California at Berkeley , Princeton , Yale , California Institute of Technology and Columbia rank six to ten respectively . The results show that for the fifth year in a row there is an elite group of six US and UK ‘ super brands ’ , the authors suggested , which are ‘ head and shoulders above the rest ’ . While Harvard took first place again , Cambridge moved up from fourth , and Oxford , rose from fifth to third . M.I.T . was down two on last year to fourth place , while Stanford fell two places to fifth and University of California , Berkeley remained in sixth . Columbia steps into the top ten displacing University of California , Los Angeles , which slipped to 13th position . Cambridge University ( left ) and Oxford University ( right ) were the only two non-American institutions in the top 10 of the newly released rankings . Other American universities that just missed out on a place in the top 10 are the University of Chicago ( 11 ) , John Hopkins University ( 18 ) , University of Michigan ( 19 ) and Cornell University ( 20 ) . Overall , the U.S. remains dominant with 43 top 100 places , compared with 46 last year . The U.K. with 12 representatives , up from 10 in 2014 , has had a strong year and remains firmly entrenched as the world number two when it comes to global university brands . Aside from Oxford and Cambridge , other U.K. universities in the top 100 include Imperial College London , which falls one place to 14th , University College London , which is up eight places to 17th , and the London School of Economics and Political Science which has moved from 24th to 22nd . 1 Harvard , U.S. 2 Cambridge , U.K. 3 Oxford , U.K. 4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology , U.S. 5 Stanford , U.S. 6 University of California , Berkeley , U.S. 7 Princeton , U.S. 8 Yale , U.S. 9 California Institute of Technology , U.S. 10 Columbia , U.S. Across the world , London and Paris have the highest number of prestigious universities in the world . Each have five universities in the top 100 . There has also been a marked improvement by universities in Brazil , Russia and China , and a continued solid performance from academic institutions across Europe , as well as in Canada , Australia , and across Asia . The rankings are based on a survey of about 10,000 academics in 142 countries . They were asked to nominate up to ten of the best institutions in the world for teaching and research . Responses were collected between November 2014 and January 2015 . Harvard has ranked number one for each of the five years that the survey has been conducted . The oldest academic institute in the U.S. , dating from 1636 , the school is named after its first benefactor , John Harvard . It has the global academy 's largest financial endowment and boasts more than 40 Nobel laureates . MIT 's campus at Cambridge , Massachusetts . MIT slipped two places this year but still came fourth . Like MIT , Stanford in California also slipped two places allowing Oxford and Cambridge into the second and third spots .
U.S. institutions dominate the list of world 's best universities leaving other countries trailing far behind in terms of numbers . Harvard takes the top spot for the fifth year running . Oxford and Cambridge are the only non-American universities in top ten . The University of California is at number one, followed by Stanford, MIT, Caltech, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Duke, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Washington State, Boston College