University of Arizona Cracks The Top 100 In U.S. News & World Report’s Global College Rankings

The University of Arizona has again cracked the top 100 in U.S. News & World Report’s global college rankings.

Coming in at No. 85 in the world for the 2020 rankings, UA has a global score of 70.6. Just like last year, it is the lone Arizona university to make the top 100 list. The list is based on evaluations of 1,250 of the world’s top research institutions across 75 countries. The rankings were released on Tuesday.

UA slipped four spots from last year’s rankings, when it was No. 81.


Arizona State University had the state’s second highest ranking — No. 145 in the world. ASU was tied this year with University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Arizona’s largest drop came from Northern Arizona University, which dropped 34 places since its 2019 ranking. NAU came in at No. 688, ending in a tie with universities from Sweden, Hungary and Jordan.

The top four schools in the world were all from the U.S.: Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. The University of Oxford in the U.K. was the highest-ranked non-U.S. school.

In the 2020 U.S. News & World’s Report of top U.S. universities, both ASU and UA ranked at No. 117.

Those higher rankings are likely because the top U.S. college and graduate school rankings heavily rely on data such as scores on admissions tests, graduation rates, retention rates, class sizes and financial resources.

The U.S. led all other countries with the total number of universities ranked on the list at 249. China came in second with 188, followed by the United Kingdom with 86.

Click here to see where your alma mater placed on the list,