World's top 100 universities 2013: their reputations ranked by Times Higher Education

Harvard university has topped the Times Higher Education world reputation rankings 2013. Photograph: Mark Peterson/ Corbis

Harvard university has once again topped the Times Higher Education's world reputation ranking of universities. The 2013 rankings, show the US dominating the list with more than 40 institutions in the top 100.

Following Harvard are Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Cambridge university, taking second and third place respectively. Oxford university has climbed two places since the 2012 rankings, to take fourth place and Stanford university has dropped down to sixth.

The rankings also highlight a big improvement for Australia which now has six universities represented in the top 100 - the third highest representation in the list behind the US and the UK. Australia has two new entries: the university of New South Wales and Monash university.

With nine universities in the top 100, the UK has the second highest number of representatives after the US. University College London (UCL) has moved up one place to 20th and the London School of Economics (LSE) has jumped up to 25th in the latest rankings. Manchester university has entered the top 50 for the first time and Edinburgh university, the only Scottish institution in the list, has moved up three places to 46th place. It's not such good news for Leeds university though, the university has dropped out of the top 100 since the 2012 rankings placed them within the 81-90 band.

Overall, the UK's representation in the top 100 has declined since 2011. Phil Baty, rankings editor at Times Higher Education magazine, said:

There is some good news for the UK, but only for a handful of its elite institutions. Outside the chosen few, there is cause for alarm: the UK has lost three institutions from the world top 100 list since the reputation rankings were first published in 2011.

Traditionally, the strength in depth of the UK system has been one of its great features. Having a large number of institutions with truly world-class standing has delivered huge returns for the whole sector and the wider economy. However, it now seems that a gap is opening up between the very best and the rest, with even household name institutions like Sheffield and Leeds losing their lustre and falling down the rankings.

In total, 20 countries are represented in the list. The chart above shows the rankings broken down by country for 2012 and 2013.

The visualisation below shows how 2013's top 25 institutions by reputation have switched positions since the 2011 edition of this report. Harvard, MIT and Cambridge have been first, second and third respectively every year, while LSE, UCLA and Columbia University (NY) have seen the largest rises over that period.

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The annual world reputation rankings, a subsidiary of the Times Higher Education world university rankings, are based based on the results of the Academic Reputation Survey carried out by Ipsos MediaCT for Thomson Reuters. The full methodology for the rankings along with the individual scores by university can be found on the Times Higher Education site.

The latest release by Times Higher Education ranking brings to attention a group that the university ranking specialists have dubbed the 'super-brands' - a collection of elite Anglo-American universities making up the top six. According to the latest release the 'super-brands', headed by Harvard and including MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University are "heads and shoulders above the rest". Here are some other findings from the release:

• Five countries are represented in the top 20: the US, UK, Japan, Canada and Switzerland
• The University of Tokyo at 9th place, is the highest ranking university outside of the UK or US
• Six countries (compared with only four last year) have one representative in the top 100: Brazil, Taiwan, Belgium, Israel, Russia and Turkey
• Japan, the Netherlands and Germany each have five top 100 institutions, with Germany gaining a new entrant in 2013 (Freie Universität Berlin)

You can see the full 2013 world reputation rankings below, we have also included the 2012 and 2011 positions. The downloadable spreadsheet also contains breakdowns by country. What can you do with the data?

Data summary

Times Higher Education world reputation rankings

Click heading to sort table. Download this data

2013 Rank	2012 Rank	2011 Rank	Institution	Country
1	1	1	Harvard University	US
2	2	2	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	US
3	3	3	University of Cambridge	UK
4	6	6	University of Oxford	UK
5	5	4	University of California, Berkeley	US
6	4	5	Stanford University	US
7	7	7	Princeton University	US
8	9	12	University of California, Los Angeles	US
9	8	8	University of Tokyo	Japan
10	10	9	Yale University	US
11	11	10	California Institute of Technology	US
12	12	13	University of Michigan	US
13	15	23	Columbia University	US
14	14	15	University of Chicago	US
14	13	11	Imperial College London	UK
16	16	17	University of Toronto	Canada
17	16	16	Cornell University	US
18	19	22	University of Pennsylvania	US
19	18	14	Johns Hopkins University	US
20	21	19	University College London	UK
20	22	24	Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich	Switzerland
22	23	27	National University of Singapore	Singapore
23	20	18	Kyoto University	Japan
24	23	21	University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign	US
25	29	37	London School of Economics and Political Science	UK
26	37	28	Carnegie Mellon University	US
27	32	31	University of Texas at Austin	US
27	28	26	University of Washington	US
29	34	51-60	New York University	US
30	27	25	University of Wisconsin-Madison	US
31	25	31	University of British Columbia	Canada
31	33	36	Duke University	US
31	25	29	McGill University	Canada
34	36	30	University of California, San Diego	US
35	30	35	Tsinghua University	China
36	39	42	The University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
37	35	40	Northwestern University	US
38	41	39	Georgia Institute of Technology	US
39	43	45	University of Melbourne	Australia
40	31	34	University of California, San Francisco	US
41	51-60	51-60	Seoul National University	Korea, Republic Of
42	44	51-60	Australian National University	Australia
42	39	19	University of Massachusetts	US
44	42	48	Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München	Germany
45	38	43	Peking University	China
46	49	45	University of Edinburgh	UK
47	51-60	61-70	University of Manchester	UK
48	44	38	University of California, Davis	US
49	50	51-60	The University of Sydney	Australia
50			Lomonosov Moscow State University	Russian Federation
50	47	47	Purdue University	US
51-60	51-60	49	Delft University of Technology	Netherlands
51-60	61-70	71-80	École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	Switzerland
51-60	91-100		Middle East Technical University	Turkey
51-60	47	43	University of Minnesota	US
51-60	46	41	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	US
51-60	51-60	51-60	The Ohio State University	US
51-60	51-60	50	Osaka University	Japan
51-60	51-60	61-70	Pennsylvania State University	US
51-60	51-60	51-60	University of California, Santa Barbara	US
51-60	61-70	81-90	National Taiwan University	Taiwan
61-70	61-70	91-100	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	Hong Kong
61-70	51-60	51-60	Karolinska Institute	Sweden
61-70	61-70	61-70	King's College London	UK
61-70	81-90	91-100	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology	Korea, Republic Of
61-70	81-90	81-90	Leiden University	Netherlands
61-70	61-70		University of São Paulo	Brazil
61-70	61-70	71-80	University of Southern California	US
61-70	61-70	61-70	Technische Universität München	Germany
61-70	51-60	51-60	Tohoku University	Japan
61-70	51-60	51-60	Tokyo Institute of Technology	Japan
71-80	61-70		Hebrew University of Jerusalem	Israel
71-80	61-70	71-80	Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin	Germany
71-80	81-90	81-90	Katholieke Universiteit Leuven	Belgium
71-80	71-80	71-80	Michigan State University	US
71-80	81-90	91-100	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore
71-80	71-80		Université Paris-Sorbonne	France
71-80	61-70	51-60	University of Pittsburgh	US
71-80	71-80	81-90	The University of Queensland Australia	Australia
71-80	71-80	81-90	Universität Heidelberg	Germany
81-90	71-80	81-90	University of Amsterdam	Netherlands
81-90	91-100	61-70	Boston University	US
81-90	81-90		Brown University	US
81-90	81-90		The Chinese University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
81-90	91-100	61-70	École Polytechnique	France
81-90	81-90	61-70	University of Florida	US
81-90			The University of New South Wales	Australia
81-90	91-100		Université Pierre et Marie Curie	France
81-90	91-100	71-80	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey	US
81-90	71-80	71-80	Utrecht University	Netherlands
81-90	71-80	71-80	Washington University in St Louis	US
91-100	91-100	81-90	University of Bristol	UK
91-100			Freie Universität Berlin	Germany
91-100	81-90	71-80	Lund University	Sweden
91-100			University of Maryland, College Park	US
91-100			Monash University	Australia
91-100	91-100		Université Paris-Sud	France
91-100	71-80	81-90	Texas A&M University	US
91-100	71-80	61-70	Uppsala University	Sweden
91-100	91-100		Wageningen University and Research Center	Netherlands