Harvard University is the best university in the US, according to education research firm Quacquarelli Symonds.
QS releases an annual ranking of the best universities in the world. This year, the company decided to release its first-ever US-specific national university ranking.
"The QS US Rankings aim to provide not only international students with new and more granular insights when deciding on a study destination in the [United States], but also offer domestic students with a fresh outlook on their home institutions, set within the frame of a new bespoke methodology," QS told Business Insider.
QS ranked 300 US universities that have both undergraduate and graduate programs.
To rank the universities, QS used 17 metrics that fall into four broader groups that were weighted and combined into a final index score: Employability had a weight of 27%, diversity and internationalization had a weight of 25%, learning experience had a weight of 22%, and research had a weight of 26%. A university's scores in each category were added together to calculate the total index score on a scale of 0 to 100.
Harvard University earned the highest overall score of 93.3, making it the best US university according to QS' metrics. Harvard scored a perfect score in employability and research, 76.0 in diversity and internationalization, and 96.8 in learning experience.
Stanford, MIT, and University of California, Berkeley, followed behind Harvard with scores above 79.0. Additionally, 14 universities on the list had a total index score of over 70.0 out of 100.
The following are the 50 best US universities and their total index scores. To find out where the top 300 universities in the US fall on the list, read the full ranking on QS' website.
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