UC Berkeley top U.S. public, fourth-best overall in QS World rankings

UC Berkeley ranks nationally as the No. 1 public and fourth-best university overall, according to the QS World University Rankings’ inaugural listing of top American universities.

Harvard University, Stanford University and MIT took the top three spots, with Columbia University behind Berkeley to round out the top five universities with the highest overall scores across the four criteria of research, learning experience, diversity and internationalism, and employability.

UCLA and Yale University tied in 6^th place, followed by the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton and Cornell universities.

As for the top five public universities, after UC Berkeley (1^st) and UCLA (6^th), the University of Michigan ranked 18th, the University of Washington 24th and the University of Texas at Austin 25th.

Three other UC campuses made the top 50, with UC San Diego placing 26^th, UC Davis 28^th and UC Irvine 41^st.

These latest rankings by the United Kingdom-based QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), a company that specializes in the analysis of higher education institutions around the world, evaluated 302 research universities in 49 states, marking the company’s first listing of America’s top four-year colleges.

Across all four criteria of research, learning experience, diversity and internationalism, and employability, Harvard scored 93.3 out of 100 points, Stanford 89.7, MIT 87.1, Berkeley 79.2 and Columbia 79.