UC Santa Barbara was ranked in the top 50 of the 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities.
UCSB came in at 49th, and was one of four schools from the Big West Conference in the top 100. UC San Diego was listed the 18th best in the world ranking, UC Irvine was tied for 69th and UC Davis tied for 91st.
All four institutions have been ranked in the top 100 in the annual Academic Ranking of World Universities list every year since it was established in 2003.
Harvard was No. 1 in the world ranking and Stanford came in second Stanford. England’s University of Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley rounded out the top five.
This year’s ranking included 1,000 universities from 90 countries and regions.
The list is based on six objective indicators, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals; the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science; the number of highly cited researchers; the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index; and per capita performance.
In rankings of schools in the U.S., Harvard and Stanford were 1-1, MIT was third, California fourth and Princeton fifth.
UCSB was ranked the 30th best university in the country.
The rankings are released by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, a public research university considered one of the most prestigious universities in China.
— Noozhawk sports editor Barry Punzal can be reached at bpunzal@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.