6 Colleges In Virginia Ranked Best on Earth

U.S. News & World Report has ranked six Virginia universities among the best on Earth. The annual rankings were released on Tuesday and compared 1,250 schools across 75 countries.

"Schools that prioritize quality academic research remain at the top of the rankings," U.S. News Chief Data Strategist Robert Morse said in a release.

Here’s how Virginia did on the "Best Global Universities" list, according to U.S. News & World Report:

University of Virginia
Ranking: 111th in world

Virginia Tech
Ranking: 257th in world

Virginia Commonwealth University
Ranking: 373rd in world

George Mason University
Ranking: 403rd in world

William & Mary
Ranking: 526th in world

Old Dominion University
Ranking: 738th in world

There were also five from D.C.: George Washington University (No. 257), Georgetown University (No. 289), Howard University (No. 692), American University (No. 745) and Catholic University of America (No. 1066).

The United States boasted four of the top five spots in the global rankings. Massachusetts was home to the top two in the world while California boasted three of the top six universities.

Across the 22 subject rankings, which evaluate the humanities, applied sciences, mathematics and more, Harvard ranked No. 1 in 10 subjects — more than any other school, the news outlet said.

Here are the country’s top 10 universities and their global rankings:

1. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (1)
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (2)
3. Stanford University, Stanford, CA (3)
4. University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (4)
5. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA (6)
6. Columbia University, New York, NY (8)
7. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (9)
8. University of Washington, Seattle, WA (10)
9. Yale University, New Haven, CT (11)
10. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (12)

The United States dominated, with 227 schools around the country making the list.

China had the second most institutions on the list with 130, followed by the United Kingdom with 78, Japan with 67, and Germany with 62. Three of the top 10 schools in engineering and four of the top 10 schools in computer science were based in China, including Tsinghua University, which ranked No. 1 in both subjects.

However, the U.S. performed among the best in four subjects: neuroscience and behavior, economics and business, computer science and engineering.

“When we first started publishing Best Global Universities, the rankings evaluated 500 schools in 11 countries,” Morse said. “Since then, we’ve added 750 schools and have expanded to 75 nations. One thing has remained the same: Schools that prioritize quality academic research remain at the top of the rankings.”

A pool of 1,372 universities were evaluated for the global rankings, which focused on academic research and reputation rather than their separate undergraduate or graduate programs. Thirteen factors were used to determine the rankings, specifically indicators that measure a school’s reputation and so-called bibliometric indicators that measure academic research performance, including citations and publications.

Read more on the methodology.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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