For the first time in 14 years, the best university in the world isn't in America

Oxford and Cambridge outrank elite US counterparts

Oxford University (Getty/iStock)

For the first time in 14 years, an American college didn't crack the top two in a ranking of the best universities in the world, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018 list.

United Kingdom-based Oxford and Cambridge Universities came in No.1 and No. 2, respectively.

Times Higher Ed reviews the top 1,000 universities in the world looking at factors of teaching, research, and influence to rank them.

It reviews quantitative factors, like the number of times a university's published work is cited by scholars globally, and qualitative factors, like peer surveys, to assemble the ranking.

Read below to see the top 10 universities in the world:

10. University of Pennsylvania (tie)

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Students: 20,361

Number of students per faculty member: 6.5

10. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (tie)

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Students: 19,233

Number of students per faculty member: 14.6

9. University of Chicago

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Students: 13,525

Number of students per faculty member: 6.2

8. Imperial College London​

Location: Kensington, London

Students: 15,857

Number of students per faculty member: 11.4

7. Princeton University​

Location: Princeton, New Jersey

Students: 7,955

Number of students per faculty member: 8.3

6. Harvard University​

(Wikipedia)

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Students: 29,326

Number of students per faculty member: 8.9

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Students: 11,177

Number of students per faculty member: 8.7

3. Stanford University (tie)​

Location: Stanford, California

Students: 15,845

Number of students per faculty member: 7.5

3. California Institute of Technology (tie)​

Location: Pasadena, California

Students: 2,209

Number of students per faculty member: 6.5

2. University of Cambridge

Cambridge University, where almost a third of applications from UK state-school students were for the five most over-subscribed subjects (PA)

Location: Cambridge, England

Students: 18,389

Number of students per faculty member: 10.9

1. University of Oxford​

Location: Oxford, England

Students: 20,409

Number of students per faculty member: 11.2

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