Stanford Leapfrogs Cal in World Reputation Ranking

While UC Berkeley and Stanford are ranked in the elite top six universities worldwide for reputation, they traded places with Stanford jumping ahead of UC Berkeley.

Stanford's news bureau was silent on the honor, while UC Berkeley issued a press release titled, "Berkeley shines in new reputation, graduate school rankings," about the Times Higher Education ranking and the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking of graduate schools, which placed several Berkeley programs high on the list.

Led by Harvard, the top six this year are the same as the top six last year and rank in the same order – with one exception. Stanford moved up to fourth this year from fifth, while Cal dropped from fourth to fifth.

The top six this year are:

• Harvard
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• Cambridge
• Stanford
• UC Berkeley
• Oxford

According to the 2012 Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings released Thursday, these universities scored considerably higher than others in the poll of more 17,500 academics worldwide. 

Also significant, the Times said, is improved standings of Asian universities. This year's ranking finds the University of Tokyo in eighth place below Princeton in seventh and above UCLA in ninth and Yale in 10th.

Though the U.S. universities dominate the list with 44 of the top 100, "Chinese universities performed well, with Tsinghua University up to 30th from 35th place and Peking University rising to 38th from 43rd, the Times said. 

"The University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University and the National University of Singapore all rose this year, while Japan has five institutions in the top 100," the Times said.