2021 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects

ShanghaiRanking began to publish world university ranking by academic subjects in 2009. By introducing improved methodology, the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) was first published in 2017. The 2024 GRAS contains rankings of universities in 55 subjects across Natural Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, and Social Sciences. More than 1,900 out of 5,000 universities across 96 countries and regions are finally listed in the rankings. The GRAS rankings use a range of objective academic indicators and third-party data to measure the performance of world universities in respective subjects, covering in 5 major evaluation categories such as World-Class Faculty, World-Class Output, High Quality Research, Research Impact and International Collaboration. The index of international academic awards is based on Academic Excellence Survey (AES) conducted by ShanghaiRanking.(Methodology)

500 Institutions

World Rank	Institution	Total Score	Q1 CNCI IC TOP AWARD
1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	355.4	71.5
2	Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology	342.1	70.4
3	University of California, Berkeley University of California, Berkeley	340.9	63.9
4	Harvard University Harvard University	334.4	55.6
5	Northwestern University Northwestern University	331.4	62.3
6	University of Cambridge University of Cambridge	322.9	63.2
7	Stanford University Stanford University	316.1	63.2
8	Tsinghua University Tsinghua University	296.4	100.0
9	Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Technological University	296.2	81.1
10	University of California, Los Angeles University of California, Los Angeles	293.7	49.9
11	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	281.5	53.1
12	Peking University Peking University	278.7	81.3
13	University of Science and Technology of China	277.5	88.4
14	Pennsylvania State University - University Park	268.4	56.0
15	National University of Singapore National University of Singapore	264.5	73.4
16	Soochow University Soochow University	260.6	78.4
17	Imperial College London Imperial College London	255.6	60.2
18	Zhejiang University Zhejiang University	249.3	80.5
19	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor University of Michigan-Ann Arbor	243.9	54.6
20	Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai Jiao Tong University	242.1	83.4
21	Huazhong University of Science and Technology	238.6	78.2
22	Tianjin University Tianjin University	238.1	76.9
23	Nanjing University Nanjing University	234.9	69.8
24	University of California, San Diego University of California, San Diego	234.7	45.2
25	Fudan University Fudan University	233.7	68.9
26	King Abdullah University of Science and Technology	232.7	50.6
27	University of Oxford University of Oxford	231.7	53.1
28	South China University of Technology South China University of Technology	230.1	81.6
29	Cornell University Cornell University	230.0	42.6
30	The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin	229.8	49.3

* Institutions within the same rank range are listed alphabetically.

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Methodology-Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2020