USP is the best university in Latin America, according to international ranking
The University of São Paulo (USP) is among the 120 best in the world in the Global 2000 list, released this Monday (1st) by the World University Rankings Center (CWUR).
Jornal da USP, in an article written by Michel Sitnik, highlights that the institution occupies 119th position among the 21,291 universities evaluated in this year's edition by the consultancy, which has published its global ranking since 2012.
"The result places USP in the top 0.6% of all higher education institutions in the world mapped by the survey and in first place both in Brazil and in Latin America and the Caribbean", highlights the text.
The CWUR distinguishes itself from other rankings by not using questionnaires answered by the universities themselves or perception surveys. The methodology is based exclusively on objective and verifiable indicators, constructed from 81 million data points. The criteria are distributed across seven indicators grouped into four axes: education and employability of graduates (25% each), qualification of teaching staff (10%) and research, the latter being subdivided into volume of publications, quality of the journals in which the articles were published, influence and number of citations (10% each).
"USP's overall score remained stable compared to previous years, but the methodology of this ranking favors indicators that disfavor institutions that are not in the so-called global north, which may have interfered with the University's positioning, with a drop of one position. An example is the number of professors and graduates awarded in a very restricted list of awards and academic distinctions considered prestigious, such as Nobel and Fields", assesses the coordinator of the Performance Indicator Management Office Academic (Egida), Renata Eloah de Lucena Ferretti-Rebustini.
Best universities in the CWUR 2026 ranking:
1. Harvard University - USA
2. MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) - USA
3. Stanford - USA
4. University of Cambridge - United Kingdom
5. University of Oxford - United Kingdom
6. Princeton University - USA
7. University of Pennsylvania - USA
8. Columbia University - USA
9. Yale University - USA
10. University of Chicago - USA
119. USP (University of São Paulo) - Brazil
346. UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) - Brazil
379. Unicamp (University of Campinas) - Brazil
476. Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - Brazil
479. Unesp (Paulista State University)
508. UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais)
The complete list is available on the CWUR website.
Source: Antena 1