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)

100 Institutions

World Rank	Institution	Total Score	Q1 CNCI IC TOP AWARD
1	Harvard University Harvard University	292.7	100.0
2	City University of Hong Kong City University of Hong Kong	227.1	80.4
3	Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington	225.5	84.1
4	Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University	218.7	67.5
5	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor University of Michigan-Ann Arbor	210.5	73.4
6	University of Washington University of Washington	193.8	65.8
7	Wuhan University Wuhan University	192.8	84.1
8	National University of Singapore National University of Singapore	188.6	66.6
9	University of Maryland, College Park University of Maryland, College Park	187.0	61.8
10	University of Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania	185.9	61.4
11	The University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales	185.6	65.3
12	Columbia University Columbia University	184.1	60.4
13	Georgia State University Georgia State University	180.9	66.6
14	University of Montreal University of Montreal	179.9	64.9
15	Tsinghua University Tsinghua University	178.6	61.4
16	University of Utah University of Utah	177.9	55.1
17	University of Arizona University of Arizona	177.8	63.6
18	University of Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh	177.3	55.6
19	The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston	176.7	51.4
20	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	175.9	57.1
21	Stanford University Stanford University	175.2	55.1
22	Northwestern University Northwestern University	172.0	54.6
23	Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen Business School	171.8	54.0
24	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	171.6	54.6
25	University of Science and Technology of China	171.4	54.0
26	The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin	170.4	62.3
27	KU Leuven KU Leuven	170.1	70.7
28	Yonsei University Yonsei University	169.8	61.8
29	Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology	169.0	57.1
30	University of Amsterdam University of Amsterdam	168.8	65.3

* Institutions within the same rank range are listed alphabetically.

Methodology-Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2020