The University of British Columbia (UBC) is once again being recognized as one of the world’s best universities, even though it saw a slight drop in a new global ranking.
According to the 2025 edition of ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), UBC placed 53rd on this year’s list.
Every year, ShanghaiRanking sifts through data and ranks over 2,500 global universities, with the best 1,000 being published.
The ARWU uses six indicators to rank universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices, and an institution’s per capita academic performance.
While UBC still cracked the top 100 list of the world’s best universities, its ranking fell six spots from 47th place in 2024.
ShanghaiRanking’s list of top Canadian schools.
The highest ranking Canadian university on the global list is the University of Toronto (U of T), which placed 25th.
U of T also saw a slight bump from last year, as it was ranked 26th in 2024.
Montreal’s McGill University was also named as one of the top 100 universities, coming in 76th spot.
As for other B.C. universities, the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University were also mentioned, but with lower world rankings.
According to the 2025 ARWU, Canada had three schools placed in the top 100, 17 in the top 500, and 28 in the top 1,000.
The U.S. dominated with 37 schools in the top 100.
As for the best 10 universities in the world, Harvard claimed first place for the 23rd year, followed by Stanford (2) and MIT (3).
In fourth place is Cambridge, Berkeley is 5th, Oxford ranked 6th, followed by Columbia (8), Caltech (9) and Chicago (10).
What are your thoughts about UBC’s placement on this year’s list? Let us know in the comments.
