These two New York colleges were ranked as some of the best in the world
The 2025 Times Higher Education World University Rankings have been released, and we’re proud to say that two New York schools make the top 20 list: Columbia University at no. 18 and Cornell University at no. 20.
The team behind the effort took a variety of factors into account when working on the ranking, looking at regional accreditation, the number of students enrolled in each school, acceptance and graduation rates, borrower debt, faculty salaries, student-to-faculty ratio, citations per publication and more.
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The University of Oxford in the U.K. earned the top spot on the ranking, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Princeton University and the University of Cambridge, of course!
But back to the New York mentions: Columbia, which landed at position 18 alongside the University of California, is actually the oldest university in the state of New York. In addition to its main campus in Manhattan, the school operates two other facilities outside the borough: the nuclear physics center Nevis Laboratories in Irvington and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades.
As for Cornell, the private Ivy League was founded back in 1865 with the mission to “discover, preserve and disseminate knowledge,” according to a writeup published alongside the survey.
Many New Yorkers may not know that Cornell actually operates six locations across the world, including ones in Qatar, Geneva and D.C.
“Its main campus in Ithaca, New York State, covers 2,300 acres of the Finger Lakes region, and is so extensive that students can go hiking without even leaving the university,” reads the writeup.
Clearly, New York is riding a successful college wave. In addition to the two above-mentioned rankings, the city has also recently announced that Vanderbilt University signed a 99-year lease to expand into town. Get ready for even more students to invade our spaces (that’s a good thing!).
The 20 best colleges in the world according to the 2025 Times Higher Education World University Rankings:
1. University of Oxford in the United Kingdom
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. Harvard University
4. Princeton University
5. University of Cambridge
6. Stanford University
7. California Institute of Technology
8. University of California, Berkeley
9. Imperial College London in the United Kingdom
10. Yale University
11. ETH Zurich in Switzerland
12. Tsinghua University in China
13. Peking University in China
14. The University of Chicago
14. University of Pennsylvania
16. Johns Hopkins University
17. National University of Singapore in Singapore
18. Columbia University
18. University of California, Los Angeles
20. Cornell University