Can you name the world's top universities?

Rank	University	Country
1.		UK
2.		USA
3.		USA
4.		UK
5.		USA
6.		UK
7.		UK
8.		USA
9.		USA
10.		USA
11.		USA
12.		USA
13.		USA
14.		USA
15.		USA
16.		USA
17.		USA
18.		Switzerland
19.		Canada
20.		Australia
21.		UK
22.		UK
23.		China
24.		Japan
25.		Japan

Rank	University	Country
26.		USA
27.		UK
28.		USA
29.		Canada
30.		UK
31.		Singapore
32.		Switzerland
33.		USA
34.		USA
35.		France
36.		France
37.		Australia
38.		Australia
39.		USA
40.		China
41.		USA
42.		China
43.		Australia
44.		Canada
45.		Denmark
46.		Australia
47.		China
48.		USA
49.		Japan
50.		South Korea
	South Korea
	South Korea
	South Korea

Javascript is not currently enabled on your browser.
If you do have Javascript enabled:
This site uses javascript to make the magic happen.
Please turn on javascript and reload this page, or use a more current browser (like Firefox)

World's Top Universities Quiz

Rating:	Report a mistake
Created by: davidr -
Published: April 10th, 2009
Category: Miscellaneous
Plays: 162,190

Tags: University Quizzes, World Quizzes, Country Quizzes, top, rank, 2008

Loading friend results....

	sbarrett:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 04:39 GMT	47 points
	I applied to all of these...sadly none let me in because of my lack of trivia knowledge.

Comment below threshold: show it

	Kicking222:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 04:59 GMT	-4 points
	Very fun, very interesting quiz. I got 33, but a huge chunk of those were guessing- I didn't even know there was such a school as University of New South Wales, but I still managed to pull it out of my a**. And my alma mater moved into the top 200! #185, baby!

	IWANTMY2DOLLARS:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 04:59 GMT	42 points
	Cornell is only 15th?! Topuniversities.com totally Schruted this list. -Andy Bernard

	bsd987:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 05:02 GMT	2 points
	ubc should be accepted

	Rose:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 05:18 GMT	28 points
	how come the US universities aren't in the same order they are in US lists? For instance... on US university rankings, Boston University doesn't even make the top 50... so why's it on this one?

	ebg:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 05:20 GMT	3 points
	It was a welcome surprise to see 18 on there, and that high.

	motrain24:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 05:34 GMT	12 points
	Kinda think "Trinity" should count

	TeganX7:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 05:34 GMT	8 points
	Interesting quiz, but how does MIT fall that low, and how does Michigan get raked ahead of NU? I wonder what the criteria was?

	kmzh:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 05:36 GMT	6 points
	@rose Various rankings all use different criteria.

	pete:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 05:38 GMT	13 points
	Good quiz. Took me forever to come up with CIT. Typed Sorbonne about 15 times just hoping it would somehow miraculously show up. Mostly an exercise in typing foreign cities, but still interesting. The best part is telling my Dartmouth friends that they are not on this list.

Comment below threshold: show it

	carterchung:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 05:57 GMT	2 points
	ucla over cal? what a joke

Comment below threshold: show it

	Ryan:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 06:06 GMT	4 points
	Ya, rly surprised that Boston University made this list...

	SowCrates:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 06:20 GMT	19 points
	On the website, it lists research quality, teaching quality, graduate employability, and international outlook as criteria...As always, ranking universities seems skewed to me, or seem to point out the obvious. Graduate employability? isn't there a chicken-or-the-egg game behind using that to judge an institution? Isn't half the point of harvard just having the Harvard sticker, which then increases your chance of getting a job almost by default?

Comment below threshold: show it

	SowCrates:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 07:09 GMT	21 points
	@ JD_Salinger I know you're on the quest to have the lowest point average per comment ever, but I do wish you took a page from Salinger: "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes"

	phurballDJ:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 07:40 GMT	4 points
	Why doesn't it accept "Berkeley"? You have to type in the whole thing?

Comment below threshold: show it

	SowCrates:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 08:01 GMT	4 points
	you didn't say poo in that sentence!

	melissa:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 08:03 GMT	4 points
	@pete: I was suprised by Dartmouth's absence too, but maybe it's because Dartmouth calls itself a college, not a university? Couldn't find anything on the ranking site defining university v. college though.

	melissa:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 08:11 GMT	5 points
	@Arlen: it's true that grad employability is often a function of the university's reputation - so it seems circular to feed that criterion back into reputation. But there are many self-perpetuating aspects to university reputation - e.g. Harvard has a good reputation, so it attracts top talent (students and faculty) which in turn contributes to the continued reputation. Of course, much of that "talent" is research talent, not necessarily teaching talent - it always saddens me how teaching quality is regularly devalued compared to research quality/quantity.

Comment below threshold: show it

	A_is_for_Addict:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 08:34 GMT	10 points
	Some serious discrepancies with the top UK universities quiz, no St Andrews, Warwick, York, Loughborough... All of which were higher than Manchester and Edinburgh! And Cambridge above Oxford - controversial!

	davidr:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 09:05 GMT	-1 points
	@Sam: Different source, different criteria. Why do people get so wound up about these alleged `inconsistencies'. Ask two people what their favourite restaurant is and they'll give you a different answers. Does that mean one of them is wrong?

	davidr:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 09:51 GMT	4 points
	@Melissa: It's nothing to do with using the word `College', as demonstrated by #5, #7, #22 and #49.

	The Great Sporcler:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 10:06 GMT	13 points
	Seriously, this goes to show how pointless university rankings are - there are a few UK universities here that didn't make the [Sporcle] UK top 25.

	shel99:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 10:09 GMT	5 points
	Undergrad at #46 and Masters at #1 -- w00t! I'm edumacated! That said, I too was a little surprised that BU made the list... I just typed it in 'cause you have to try your alma mater, you know?

	LB1973:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 10:13 GMT	6 points
	Any list that has Edinburgh but not St Andrews is fundamentally flawed.

	rb357:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 10:20 GMT	10 points
	Slightly surprised that the likes of Durham, Warwick etc. don't make the grade - yet Manchester and Bristol are here.

	davidr:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 10:26 GMT	-1 points
	@TGS: Actually, there's only one (Manchester) that wasn't on the UK top 25. And eight people commented on that quiz expressing their surprise at its omission.

	Clarry:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 10:26 GMT	3 points
	NDUS is ranked 100+ in the world rankings (depends on which one you look). UWA is ranked 50+ in the rankings (again, depending on which ranking you look at) This was a good quiz but ambiguous.

	montecarlo:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 10:51 GMT	5 points
	perhaps accept beijing university or "bei-da" for peking university, as that is what its referred to as in china. i believe it was only named peking pre-1949 (check me on that though).

	davidr:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 11:50 GMT	0 points
	@montecarlo: The English-language name of the university is `Peking University' — this name even appears on the university crest. See, for example, http://www.pku.edu.cn/

	RavenEleni:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 11:55 GMT	6 points
	why does it accept "lausanne" for the epfl, but not "zurich" for ETHZ ?

	karinaedge:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 12:18 GMT	4 points
	mcgill when from 12 in 2007 to 20 in 2008. damn. probably because of the ****ty art history teacher i had last semester. haha

	tobinw:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 12:45 GMT	9 points
	Can't believe some schools on this list made it over Vanderbilt, North Carolina, Loughborough, St. Andrews, Durham, etc. Also quite surprised there were no German schools on the list.

	davidr:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 12:50 GMT	1 point
	@Tobin W.: I guess the absence of German universities is partly because it's very difficult for a non-German to get a job there, which means that they have less world-wide impact.

	Rackie:	Apr 10th, 2009 at 12:58 GMT	3 points
	Ok, so Trinity isn't accepted but not even Trinity Dublin?? :/