Earlier this week US News and World Report (USNWR) released, for the first time, a global ranking of universities including rankings by subject area. In mathematics, the top ten universities are:

1. Berkeley
2. Stanford
3. Princeton
4. UCLA
5. University of Oxford
6. Harvard
7. King Abdulaziz University
8. Pierre and Marie Curie – Paris 6
9. University of Hong Kong
10. University of Cambridge

The past few days I’ve received a lot of email from colleagues and administrators about this ranking, and also the overall global ranking of USNWR in which Berkeley was #1. The emails generally say something to the effect of “of course rankings are not perfect, everybody knows… but look, we are amazing!”

BUT, one of the top math departments in the world, the math department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is ranked #11… they didn’t even make the top ten. Even more…