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)

400 Institutions

World Rank	Institution	Total Score	Q1 CNCI IC TOP AWARD
1	Xi'an Jiaotong University Xi'an Jiaotong University	282.5	100.0
2	University of Cambridge University of Cambridge	278.1	42.7
3	Texas A&M University Texas A&M University	271.9	39.1
4	Tsinghua University Tsinghua University	268.3	87.5
5	Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai Jiao Tong University	263.7	93.1
6	Stanford University Stanford University	259.7	32.6
7	California Institute of Technology California Institute of Technology	249.9	21.5
8	University of California, San Diego University of California, San Diego	249.3	23.8
9	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	248.0	38.3
10	Northwestern University Northwestern University	247.4	26.4
11	Harbin Institute of Technology Harbin Institute of Technology	241.4	84.5
12	Imperial College London Imperial College London	230.9	52.6
13	Huazhong University of Science and Technology	225.1	72.5
14	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	223.4	28.7
15	Beihang University Beihang University	223.1	72.6
16	Harvard University Harvard University	222.1	17.4
17	University of Science and Technology of China	220.8	60.5
18	Technical University of Denmark Technical University of Denmark	220.4	45.8
19	The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin	218.4	24.3
20	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor University of Michigan-Ann Arbor	215.8	45.1
21	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	210.4	44.0
22	Purdue University - West Lafayette Purdue University - West Lafayette	208.6	53.4
23	Tianjin University Tianjin University	206.3	68.8
23	University of California, Berkeley University of California, Berkeley	206.3	30.2
25	The Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University	206.1	58.2
26	Zhejiang University Zhejiang University	206.0	61.1
27	Northwestern Polytechnical University Northwestern Polytechnical University	203.4	65.7
28	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology	203.1	39.1
29	Dalian University of Technology Dalian University of Technology	200.9	63.1
30	King Abdullah University of Science and Technology	200.4	39.1

* Institutions within the same rank range are listed alphabetically.

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Methodology-Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2020