The world's top 10 universities

Harvard has been ranked as the top university in the world, reveals the research conducted by The Times Higher Education. The United States dominated the world reputation rankings, with seven of its institutions in the list of top 10 universities.

India, Japan, Singapore, Netherlands, Taiwan, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, France, Sweden, and Switzerland have also found a place in the rankings besides the US, UK, and Canada. Tokyo University was placed as eighth in the list. The Indian Institute of Science (IIS) was ranked 92.

UK's Cambridge University has been named as the most highly regarded university in the world, while Oxford came third in a table that ranks universities exclusively on an academic level, reported The Daily Mail.

Overall, the US has 45 universities in the top 100, while the UK has 12, and Japan has five. These three nations were the best represented in the rankings.

Canada, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands had four universities each in the top 100.

Phil Baty, editor of The Times Higher Education world university rankings said, "In an ever more competitive global market for students, academics and university administrators, and at a time when the answers to the world's most pressing problems will come from putting together the best brains wherever in the world they may be based, a university's reputation for academic excellence is crucial."

With inputs from ANI

Harvard is at number 1 again: maintaining its tradition from last year.

Located in Massachusetts, the university has over 2,100 faculty members and a student intake of about 21,000 each year for its degree programmes.

The university also has over 7,000 international students and scholars currently enrolled in its many study programmes.

The MIT has picked up by one spot this year, and rests on number 2.

The institute has 34 academic departments, divisions and degree-granting programmes and over 1,025 faculty members.

The student enrollments were over 10,000 in 2009-10 and it also has over 2,700 international students currently enrolled.

The University of Cambridge was at number 6 last year, and has risen to number 3 this year.

It is the seventh oldest university in the world, and has 31 colleges associated with it, 100 deaprtments, faculties and syndicates, and 6 schools (arts and humanities, biological studies, clinical medicine, humanities and social studies, physical sciences and technology).

At present, there are over 17,000 students enrolled at the university, of which over 1,000 are international students from over 120 different countries.

The University of California, Berkeley has shot up by 4 spots this year, earlier being at number 8. 

At number 4 in the Times Higher Education survey, UC Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is one of the oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California (UC).

The University was founded in 1868 in a merger of the private college of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College. Berkeley has been referred to as the campus of the UC system. The university occupies 6,651 acres (2,692 ha) with the central campus resting on approximately 200 acres (80.9 ha) in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Berkeley offers around 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines, and the university has the highest number of graduate programs ranked in the top 10 in their fields by the United States National Research Council.

Among other distinctions, university faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 66 nobel prizes, 9 wolf prizes, 7 fields medals, 12 turing awards, 43 MacArthur Fellowships, 19 Academy Awards, and 11 Pulitzer Prizes.

Stanford has fallen by a rank this year. After last year's rank at number 4, the university has been ranked at number 5. Stanford is a private research university, and emphasises on scientific, technological, and social science research.

Eighty-nine percent of its undergraduate students live on-campus, and it is located between San Fransisco and San Jose, in California.

Like it did last year, Oxford University is at number 6 this year, retaining the same position. It has 39 colleges affiliated to it, and offering a slew of undergrad and postgrad courses.

The university also has a student population of over 18,000, out of which an entire quarter comprises of international enrolments.

Having dropped by two spots this year is Princeton, which is now at the number 7 rank, from last year's number 5 rank.

It is the fourth oldest college in the US, it has over 1,100 faculty members, and 34 departments from its School of Architecture, School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

The university has a student strength of over 7,500, from over 98 countries.

The biggest jump has been for Japan's most popular university, the University of Tokyo, which has made it to the top 10 world universities this year, resting at number 8. Last year, the University of Tokyo was at number 26.

The university has 10 faculties, 30,000 students, and 2,100 international students. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Shirokane, and Nakano.

Yale University has shot up in rank by one spot, after being number 10 last year.

The university offers over 2,000 undergraduate courses in the liberal arts and sciences and has over 65 departments and programmes.

The university has over 3,600 faculty members and over 11,000 students enrolled, of which over 1,872 are international students.

The California Institute of Technology has dropped by an entire 8 spots this year, and is on number 10, from last year's number 2.

The institute enrols over 2,100 students every year and employs about 300 professorial faculty for its seven academic divisions that include biology, chemistry, engineering, geological sciences and social science.

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) brings India the only place in the top 100 universities. The IISc is a research institution of higher learning, located in Bangalore, India, and is established in 1909. The IISc is one of India's premier institutes for scientific research and study.