UBC named #2 university in Canada, #40 in the world for 2015

The University of British Columbia has once again made the list of best universities in the world, coming in at second place in Canada behind the University of Toronto.

Harvard University once again claimed first position on the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) list, followed by Stanford, MIT and University of California – Berkeley. All but two of the top 10 universities are located in the United States, aside from Cambridge and Oxford in the United Kingdom.

The University of Toronto took Canada’s top spot at number 25 in the World, followed by UBC at number 40, McGill University at 64 and McMaster University at number 96.

UBC fell in the ranking since 2014 when they held the 37th position. This is the second time UBC has place at number 40 since 2003, the lowest position they have claimed on the list in the same number of years. The Canadian rankings have not changed significantly over the years with Toronto always claiming first place followed by UBC.

Toronto, UBC, McGill and McMaster have always been the top four universities in Canada since the ARWU rankings began in 2003 and are the only Canadian schools to make the World’s Top 100.

The 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities is decided by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. The Center analyzes six determining factors in creating their list, including the “number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of Highly Cited Researchers, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance.”

It is important to note that these rankings are mostly based on universities which excel in scientific or technology studies as opposed to those with an emphasis on liberal arts. They are ranked on five broad spectrum fields, including:

Natural Sciences and Mathematics
Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences
Life and Agriculture Sciences
Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy
Social Sciences

B.C.’s three largest universities made the top 20 in Canada, with Simon Fraser University placing at 10th in the country (201-300 in the world) and University of Victoria at number 14 (201-300 in the world).

Top universities in Canada in 2015

University of Toronto
University of British Columbia
McGill University
McMaster University
University of Alberta
University of Montreal
Dalhousie University
Laval University
Queen’s University
Simon Fraser University
University of Calgary
University of Guelph
University of Ottawa
University of Victoria
University of Waterloo
Western University
University of Manitoba
University of Saskatchewan
Carleton University
University of Quebec

Top 50 universities in the world

Harvard University, USA
Stanford University, USA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA
University of California-Berkeley, USA
University of Cambridge, UK
Princeton University, USA
California Institute of Technology, USA
Columbia University, USA
University of Chicago, USA
University of Oxford, UK
Yale University, USA
University of California-Los Angeles, USA
Cornell University, USA
University of California-San Diego, USA
University of Washington, USA
Johns Hopkins University, USA
University of Pennsylvania, USA
University College London, UK
University of California-San Francisco, USA
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland
University of Tokyo, Japan
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, USA
The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, UK
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
University of Toronto, Canada
Kyoto University, Japan
New York University, USA
Northwestern University, USA
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA
Duke University, USA
Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Rockefeller University, USA
University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Pierre and Marie Curie University-Paris 6, France
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
University of California-Santa Barbara, USA
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
University of British Columbia, Canada
University of Manchester, UK
University of Paris-Sude (Paris 11), France
University of Maryland-College Park, USA
University of Melbourne, Australia
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, USA
Heidelberg University, Germany
University of Edinburgh, UK
Karolinska Institute, Sweden
University of Southern California, USA
University of California-Irvine, USA

View the full list here.