Chinese mainland holds strong in 2025 top world universities rankings

Higher education consultancy ShanghaiRanking released the 2025 Academic Ranking of World Universities on Aug 15, a list of the best 1,000 universities worldwide after assessing more than 2,500.

The ARWU uses six objectives to rank world universities — the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, the number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate, the number of articles indexed in the Science Citation Index, Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index from the Web of Science, and each university's per capita performance.

The Chinese mainland's universities continue to hold strong on the ARWU list, with 222 universities ranked in the top 1,000, outnumbering the United States' 183 universities.

The US maintains a significant lead in the top 100, holding 37 spots, followed by the Chinese mainland (13) and the United Kingdom (8).

In the Top 10, Harvard University tops the ranking list for the 23rd year, followed by Stanford and MIT. The others are Cambridge (4th), Berkeley (5th), Oxford (6th), Princeton (7th), Columbia (8th), Caltech (9th), and University of Chicago (10th).

Among Asian universities, Tsinghua University (18th) rises four positions and once again secures its status as the best in Asia.

In Continental Europe, Paris-Saclay University (13th) remains the highest-ranked, followed by ETH Zurich (22nd). The University of Melbourne (38th) tops other universities in Oceania for 15 consecutive years since 2011.

Two universities advance to the top 100 this year, including City University of Hong Kong (99th) and Stockholm University (100th). On the Top 500 list, 25 new entrants appear, and 39 universities enter the top 1000 for the first time.

The complete list and detailed ranking methods can be found on ShanghaiRanking's website, http://www.shanghairanking.com/.