WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. News & World Report, one of the nation's leading providers of service news and information, today released the fifth annual edition of the World's Best Universities rankings. For the past two years, the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge topped the list, but this year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology jumped from third to first. The 2012 World's Best rankings, which include colleges and universities in the United States and across the globe, are available online at www.usnews.com/worldsbest.

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The World's Best Universities rankings, updated annually by U.S. News, are based on the 2012 QS World University Rankings®, developed by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a leading global career and education network. Using a different methodology and ranking data than the well-known U.S. News Best Colleges rankings, the World's Best Universities rates schools on factors such as academic reputation, the proportion of international faculty, and the proportion of international students.

"As the job market becomes more competitive, there's a growing interest among prospective students to attend institutions abroad," said U.S. News & World Report Editor and Chief Content Officer Brian Kelly. "The World's Best Universities rankings help students compare and select the best schools worldwide. In addition, the rankings enable our readers to understand more fully how well American institutions perform when compared with other institutions of higher learning around the world."

The World's Best Universities rankings are among the most comprehensive of their kind and include the following lists: Top 400 Universities Worldwide, Top 100 Asian Universities, and Top 100 Latin American Universities. In addition to the regional rankings, there are also global rankings in 25 different subject disciplines, such as electrical engineering, accounting and finance, biological sciences, and the newly added communication and media studies.

An in-depth methodology was used to determine the 2012 rankings. For the Top 400 Universities, six distinct indicators of excellence were evaluated: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, proportion of international faculty, proportion of international students, and citations per faculty. The two regional rankings each have distinct methodologies from the global Top 400 to better reflect the uniqueness of those regions, using indicators such as the specific region's academic and employer reputations, citations per paper, and proportion of staff with Ph.D's.

For additional information on the 2012 ranking of the World's Best Universities, please visit www.usnews.com/worldsbest.

World's Best Universities Rankings 2012
* For the full list of rankings, visit www.usnews.com/worldsbest

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States)
2. University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
3. Harvard University (United States)
4. UCL (University College London) (United Kingdom)
5. University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
6. Imperial College London (United Kingdom)
7. Yale University (United States)
8. University of Chicago (United States)
9. Princeton University (United States)
10. California Institute of Technology (United States)

About U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report is a multi-platform, digital publisher of news and analysis, which includes the digital-only U.S. News Weekly magazine, www.usnews.com, and www.rankingsandreviews.com. Focusing on Health, Money, Education, Travel, Cars, and Public Service/Opinion, U.S. News has earned a reputation as the leading provider of service news and information that improves the quality of life of its readers. U.S. News & World Report's signature franchise includes its News You Can Use® brand of journalism and its "Best" series of consumer guides that include rankings of colleges, graduate schools, hospitals, mutual funds, health plans, and more.

About QS Quacquarelli Symonds
QS's mission is "to enable motivated people to fulfill their potential through educational achievement, international mobility and career development." Founded in 1990, today QS is the leading information and events company specializing in the higher education sector, worldwide. Through exclusive events, publications, research and interactive web tools, QS links undergraduate, graduate, MBA and executive communities around the world with recruiters and education providers. QS's websites include: www.topuniversities.com, www.topgradschool.com, www.topmba.com, and www.qs.com. The QS team is diverse, made up of over 200 individuals from 35 countries and includes internationally recognized experts in the higher and business education arena. QS operates globally from offices in London, Paris, New York, Singapore, Stuttgart, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, Washington DC, Boston, and Johannesburg.

SOURCE U.S. News & World Report