China's Peking only Asian institution among world's top 10 universities for mathematics

The campus of Peking University in China. Photo from the university's Facebook page Peking University has been ranked among the world's 6th best university for mathematics in the latest U.S. News Best Global Universities subject rankings, making it the only Asian institution to secure a place in the top 10. The Beijing-based university joined a list dominated by universities in the United States and the United Kingdom, according to the 2026-2027 Best Global Universities rankings published by U.S. News.The top five are Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Harvard University.The mathematics rankings measure universities' global research strength and impact in the field rather than teaching quality or student satisfaction. The methodology relies primarily on bibliometric data from the Web of Science and global academic reputation surveys.2026-2027 Best Global Universities rankings by U.S. News Countries Mathematics ranks Global ranks Stanford University U.S. 1 3 Princeton University U.S. 2 14 University of Oxford U.K. 3 4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology U.S. 4 2 Harvard University U.S. 5 1 Peking University China 6 19 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Switzerland 7 33 University of California--Berkeley U.S. 8 7 Sorbonne Université France 9 67 University of Cambridge U.K. 10 5 Universities are evaluated using indicators including global and regional research reputation, publications, books, conference papers, normalized citation impact, total citations, international collaboration, and the number of highly cited papers.Peking University was one of only three universities outside the United States and the United Kingdom to make the global top 10 for mathematics, alongside the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) and Sorbonne Université in France.The mathematics ranking forms part of the 2026-2027 U.S. News Best Global Universities rankings, which evaluated more than 2,250 universities across over 100 countries based on research performance and global academic reputation.In the overall global rankings, China's Tsinghua University is Asia's highest-ranked institution and the region's only university to break into the global top 10.The overall top five remain dominated by American and British universities. Harvard University retained the No. 1 spot, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge.