It drives the highest caliber students to choose us. It drives the highest caliber faculty and staff to choose (and remain with) us. It drives our more than half a million alumni to continue investing their time and treasure into Berkeley — and our community — to ensure that we keep thriving. Accordingly, we take care to monitor and manage our reputation.
Rankings are part of reputation, but only part, and every different ranking has a specific focus and criteria they use to list institutions. In order to get a more complete picture, we calculated a weighted average across the top-five most cited lists: U.S. News Best Colleges (released in September), U.S. News Global (June), Forbes (August), the Wall Street Journal (September), and Times Higher Education (October). When calculating averages for public institutions, only U.S. public universities are factored in. See more on our Cal Facts page.
Last update: March 2025
