University of Toronto tops Yale, Princeton, Oxford, and Cambridge in global research ranking
The University of Toronto (U of T) has topped Oxford, Cambridge, and six Ivy League schools in the latest worldwide rankings for academic research.
U of T took fourth place for academic research in the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) 2026 edition of the Global 2,000 list, being outranked only by Harvard, Stanford, and The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
This list was published on June 1.
U of T has consistently maintained a research rank of five or higher since 2019. Last year, it ranked in fifth place.
How is research rank determined?
CWUR calculates each university’s research score by averaging the score across four areas:
- Research Output – Assessed by the total number of published research articles.
- High-Quality Publications – Assessed by the number of research articles published in top-tier journals.
- Research Influence – Assessed by the number of research articles published in highly influential journals.
- Citation Impact – Assessed by the number of highly cited research articles.
Overall ranking methodology
An institution’s research score accounts for 40% of its overall score, under CWUR’s methodology.
This year, U of T ranked 23rd overall.
The CWUR assessed a total of 21,291 global institutions, and those that ranked the highest made the Global 2,000 list.
Rankings were based on four factors:
- Education – Reflects the academic distinction achieved by a university’s alumni, scaled to institutional size (25%).
- Employability – Reflects the career success of alumni, scaled to institutional size (25%).
- Faculty – Recognizes faculty members who have received leading academic honours (10%).
- Research – Considers research output, high-quality publications, research influence, and citation impact (40%).
CWUR, an independent consulting organization that produces one of the world’s most comprehensive annual rankings of higher education institutions, is the only ranking body to assess universities using these factors without relying on surveys or university-submitted data.
This is the 15th edition released, with CWUR’s first university ranking list dating back to 2012.
The table below presents the 25 top-ranking overall universities, along with their ranks in research.
| Overall rank | University | Research rank |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harvard University | 1 |
| 2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 12 |
| 3 | Stanford University | 3 |
| 4 | University of Cambridge | 14 |
| 5 | University of Oxford | 5 |
| 6 | Princeton University | 89 |
| 7 | University of Pennsylvania | 13 |
| 8 | Columbia University | 17 |
| 9 | Yale University | 22 |
| 10 | University of Chicago | 54 |
| 11 | California Institute of Technology | 103 |
| 12 | University of California, Berkeley | 24 |
| 13 | University of Tokyo | 38 |
| 14 | Cornell University | 25 |
| 15 | Northwestern University | 34 |
| 16 | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | 9 |
| 17 | University of California, Los Angeles | 20 |
| 18 | Johns Hopkins University | 8 |
| 19 | University College London | 6 |
| 20 | PSL University | 80 |
| 21 | Duke University | 29 |
| 22 | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign | 92 |
| 23 | University of Toronto | 4 |
| 24 | New York University | 49 |
| 25 | University of Washington | 11 |
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