The top three spots on the QS World University Rankings changed this year, with MIT taking the top spot for 2012. MIT overtook the University of Cambridge, which took second place ahead of Harvard, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
British schools took four of the top six spots, but American colleges and universities occupy 13 of the top 20 spots in the annual ranking.
This ranking is based on reputation among academics, reputation among employers, citations per faculty, staff-to-student ratios and international attractiveness.
Check out the entire list:
| 1 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 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 (Caltech) | United States |
| 11 | Columbia University | United States |
| 12 | University of Pennsylvania | United States |
| 13 | ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) | Switzerland |
| 14 | Cornell University | United States |
| 15 | Stanford University | United States |
| 16 | Johns Hopkins University | United States |
| 17 | University of Michigan | United States |
| 18 | McGill University | Canada |
| 19 | University of Toronto | Canada |
| 20 | Duke University | United States |
| 21 | University of Edinburgh | United Kingdom |
| 22 | University of California, Berkeley (UCB) | United States |
| 23 | University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| 24 | Australian National University | Australia |
| 25 | National University of Singapore (NUS) | Singapore |
| 26 | King's College London (University of London) | United Kingdom |
| 27 | Northwestern University | United States |
| 28 | University of Bristol | United Kingdom |
| 29 | Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne | Switzerland |
| 30 | The University of Tokyo | Japan |
| 31 | University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) | United States |
| 32 | The University of Manchester | United Kingdom |
| 33 | The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | Hong Kong |
| 34 | École Normale Supérieure, Paris | France |
| 35 | Kyoto University | Japan |
| 36 | The University of Melbourne | Australia |
| 37 | Seoul National University | Korea, South |
| 38 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | United States |
| 39 | The University of Sydney | Australia |
| 40 | The Chinese University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| 41 | Ecole Polytechnique | France |
| 42 | Brown University | United States |
| 43 | New York University (NYU) | United States |
| 44 | Peking University | China |
| 45 | University of British Columbia | Canada |
| 46 | The University of Queensland | Australia |
| 47 | Nanyang Technological University (NTU) | Singapore |
| 48 | Tsinghua University | China |
| 49 | Carnegie Mellon University | United States |
| 50 | Osaka University | Japan |
| 51 | University of Copenhagen | Denmark |
| 52 | The University of New South Wales | Australia |
| 53 | Technische Universität München | Germany |
| 54 | University of Glasgow | United Kingdom |
| 55 | Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg | Germany |
| 56 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | United States |
| 57 | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | United States |
| 58 | The University of Warwick | United Kingdom |
| 59 | University of Washington | United States |
| 60 | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München | Germany |
| 61 | Monash University | Australia |
| 62 | University of Amsterdam | Netherlands |
| 63 | KAIST - Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology | Korea, South |
| 64 | Boston University | United States |
| 65 | Tokyo Institute of Technology | Japan |
| 66 | The University of Sheffield | United Kingdom |
| 67 | Trinity College Dublin | Ireland |
| 68 | University of Texas at Austin | United States |
| 69 | London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) | United Kingdom |
| 70 | University of California, San Diego (UCSD) | United States |
| 71 | Lund University | Sweden |
| 72 | The University of Nottingham | United Kingdom |
| 73 | University of Southampton | United Kingdom |
| 74 | University of Geneva | Switzerland |
| 75 | Leiden University | Netherlands |
| 75 | Tohoku University | Japan |
| 77 | University of Birmingham | United Kingdom |
| 78 | University of Helsinki | Finland |
| 79 | The University of Western Australia | Australia |
| 80 | National Taiwan University (NTU) | Taiwan |
| 81 | Uppsala University | Sweden |
| 82 | KU Leuven | Belgium |
| 83 | The University of Auckland | New Zealand |
| 84 | Washington University in St. Louis | United States |
| 85 | Utrecht University | Netherlands |
| 86 | Nagoya University | Japan |
| 87 | Freie Universität Berlin | Germany |
| 88 | Georgia Institute of Technology | United States |
| 89 | Aarhus University | Denmark |
| 90 | Fudan University | China |
| 90 | University of Zurich | Switzerland |
| 92 | Durham University | United Kingdom |
| 93 | University of St Andrews | United Kingdom |
| 94 | University of Leeds | United Kingdom |
| 95 | City University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| 95 | Purdue University | United States |
| 97 | Pohang University of Science And Technology (POSTECH) | Korea, South |
| 98 | University of Pittsburgh | United States |
| 99 | Erasmus University Rotterdam | Netherlands |
| 100 | University of California, Davis | United States |
Based on those criteria its not surprising that MIT won.