The prestigious Harvard University has slipped to third place in the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2025 in the Science category. The first and the second place are occupied by China’s Zhejiang and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Barring the third rank, the top nine positions are dominated by Chinese universities.
Harvard University from the United States dominated the top for over a decade until 2018-2021 time period. During the 2006-2009, it ranked at the top position. The second rank was occupied by University of Toronto and the third by University of Michigan. During this period, the top ten positions were majorly dominated by universities from the United States.
Moreover, six prominent universities from the US that were in the top 10 in the first decade are nowhere in the top 15 list now. These universities included the University of Michigan, the University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University.
Harvard university was first replaced by Chinese Zhejiang University in 2019-2022 ranking. Harvard slipped again to the third place in the next ranking for the 2020-2023 time period.
Among Indian universities, VIT occupies the top position. IIT Kharagpur ranks second, followed by IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and IIT Madras.
The Leiden Ranking Traditional Edition is based on data from the Web of Science database. The CWTS Leiden Ranking Traditional Edition offers information about the scientific performance of over 1500 universities worldwide.
