Search Schools Result | Academic Influence

Which colleges and universities are the most influential in the world? And, in what do they excel?

Find the colleges and universities that have made the biggest historical impact in the discipline, country, and timeframe of your choice! We rank universities and colleges from around the world based on the scholarly work of their faculty and alumni, i.e., influence.

Note: The schools featured using this tool are influential in the disciplines selected. This does not necessarily mean that they offer a degree in the selected discipline. For example, Princeton University ranks highly for its influence in law. Given that Princeton is the alma mater of three former US presidents (James Madison, Woodrow Wilson, and John F. Kennedy) and three Supreme Court Justices (Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, & Sonia Sotomayor), among many other prominent statespeople and law makers, Princeton’s influence in the field of law is undeniable. Nevertheless, they offer degrees in politics and public policy, but not in law specifically.

To find influential schools in the US that offer degrees in your area of interest, use our Custom College Rankings tool.

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

What is Desirability?

Search Influential Schools

School Name

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Start (Year)

End (Year)

Found 50 Results for List of the most influential schools for the years 2000 – 2020

Tuition + fees

$54K

Acceptance

5%

Graduation

98%

Student body

25K

Median SAT/ACT

1515/34

Harvard University is almost universally acclaimed as the world’s most prestigious university. There is little doubt that its towering reputation is well earned.

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

An institution of higher education named University College London (UCL) was founded in the UK’s largest metropolis and capital city in 1826. A mere three years later, in 1829, a second, similar institution named King’s College London (KCL) opened its doors. Then, a mere decade after the founding of UCL, a third institution known simply as University of London (UL) was founded in 1836 by the merger of UCL and KCL.

Tuition + fees

$56K

Acceptance

5%

Graduation

95%

Student body

15K

Median SAT/ACT

1505/33

Stanford University was founded by Leland Stanford, a wealthy railroad magnate and erstwhile US Senator from California, as well as a former Governor of the Golden State. He placed the university in an unincorporated area about 30 miles south of San Francisco, adjacent to the town of Palo Alto (which he also founded). The campus lies in what is now known as Silicon Valley, which contributes greatly to the immense intellectual and economic influence of the private, research university that still bears the Stanford family name. Today, Stanford University is perhaps the closest thing to a true Iv...

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$58K

Acceptance

7%

Graduation

96%

Student body

16K

Median SAT/ACT

1515/34

Yale was originally founded under the name of Collegiate School by Connecticut Colony in 1701. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher learning in the US, after Harvard, the College of William & Mary (in Williamsburg, Virginia), and St. John’s College (in Annapolis, Maryland). Called the “Collegiate School,” its original mission was to train future ministers for the Congregational Church.

Tuition + fees

$61K

Acceptance

7%

Graduation

96%

Student body

28K

Median SAT/ACT

1505/34

Columbia is the eleventh-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. After New Jersey founded its college (now Princeton University) in 1746, New Yorkers, not wishing to be outdone, established their own college just eight years later. Its original name was King’s College.

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$53K

Acceptance

7%

Graduation

96%

Student body

14K

Median SAT/ACT

1540/35

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded shortly before the American Civil War and universally known as “MIT,” is located just across the Charles River from downtown Boston. Starting from the MIT campus, if you walk, cycle, or drive in a westerly direction along Massachusetts Avenue (“Mass Ave,” to the locals), or ride the Red Line underneath it, you soon arrive at Harvard Square, with the bulk of the town of Cambridge sandwiched in between. Thus, MIT is not unlike a bookend paired with Harvard, geographically speaking, and academically speaking, as well, it looks upon itself very mu...

Tuition + fees

$14K

Acceptance

17%

Graduation

92%

Student body

43K

Median SAT/ACT

1430/33

The University of California, Berkeley is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant university and the first campus of the University of California system. Its fourteen colleges and schools offer over 350 degree programs and enroll some 31,000 undergraduate and 12,000 graduate students. Berkeley is ranked among the world's top universities by major educational publications.

Tuition + fees

$49K

Acceptance

6%

Graduation

98%

Student body

7K

Median SAT/ACT

1515/34

Although only the ninth-oldest university in the country, Princeton is one of the most historic. Originally founded as the College of New Jersey, the school’s sixth presidents, the Scottish theologian and educator John Witherspoon, signed the Declaration of Independence—the only college leader to do so. The next year, George Washington’s colonials dealt a small but significant blow to Lord Cornwallis’s superior forces at the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777. The victories at the earlier Battle of Trenton and at Princeton had an important positive effect on American morale, leading to inc...

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$59K

Acceptance

7%

Graduation

96%

Student body

13K

Median SAT/ACT

1535/34

The University of Chicago is one of the foremost universities in the world academically, albeit one of the youngest in that august company. In spite of its relatively recent founding, the school has been associated with some of the world’s most important scientific achievements, above all, the first controlled, self-sustaining, nuclear chain reaction (atomic fission), which was achieved in late 1942 by a team led by the legendary Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi, in a laboratory beneath a football field on the Chicago campus.

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$17K

Acceptance

26%

Graduation

93%

Student body

45K

Median SAT/ACT

1435/32

The flagship campuses of many of the state university systems have superb faculties and excellent academic reputations. However, setting aside Berkeley as a special case, by our criteria the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus is the most distinguished of all these many fine institutions. That is, Michigan has a strong claim to be considered (after Berkeley) the best public research university in the US.

Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is one of the oldest universities in the world (or, at least, in Europe, not to prejudge the claims of several Islamic institutions to that title).

Tuition + fees

$60K

Acceptance

9%

Graduation

96%

Student body

28K

Median SAT/ACT

1505/34

The University of Pennsylvania (commonly known as “Penn”) is a leading private research university (note that nearly all US universities named after their state are public-supported—Penn is an exception to this rule).

Tuition + fees

$55K

Acceptance

21%

Graduation

88%

Student body

49K

Median SAT/ACT

1440/32

As the cultural mecca of the US, New York City naturally contains many fine colleges and universities. One of the very best is New York University (NYU), located in Washington Square in Lower Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. While NYU is a quintessentially urban school lacking a conventional, pastoral college campus setting, its site is immediately recognizable thanks to Washington Square Arch, which is a replica of the ancient Roman Arch of Titus and very similar in appearance to Paris’s celebrated Arc de Triomphe (though only half its size).

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$59K

Acceptance

11%

Graduation

95%

Student body

26K

Median SAT/ACT

1480/33

Cornell University was founded in turbulent times. With the Civil War winding down, and less than two weeks after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the Governor of New York signed the school’s official charter in the state capital, Albany, where only the day before Lincoln’s funeral procession had passed through the city’s streets.

Tuition + fees

$13K

Acceptance

14%

Graduation

91%

Student body

45K

Median SAT/ACT

1415/32

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA was founded as the southern branch of the California State Normal School in 1882. It became the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919, making it the second-oldest of the 10-campus University of California system.

The University of Toronto received its royal charter in 1827 from King George IV. Originally known as King’s College, it was the first institution of higher learning in the colonial Province of Upper Canada (consisting of mostly what is now southern Ontario).

Tuition + fees

$58K

Acceptance

8%

Graduation

96%

Student body

15K

Median SAT/ACT

1525/34

Duke began life as Brown’s Schoolhouse, on a site in what is now the town of Trinity in Randolph County, North Carolina, a little over 70 miles west of its current location in the city of Durham.

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$54K

Acceptance

11%

Graduation

94%

Student body

26K

Median SAT/ACT

1510/34

Johns Hopkins was designed from its origin to contribute to the cutting edge of scientific discovery. With time, this goal has been fully achieved, leading to the top-tier research institution that the university is today. The school is named after its founding benefactor, the entrepreneur and philanthropist Johns Hopkins, who contributed $7 million (approximately $145 million in today’s money) to create both the university and an associated hospital.

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$12K

Acceptance

56%

Graduation

82%

Student body

44K

Median SAT/ACT

1345/30

In the 1850s, the Governor of Washington Territory and some of his Seattle-based friends and business associates, including a prominent Methodist minister, put their heads together to figure out a way to advance two causes close to their hearts: the prospect of statehood for the territory and the economic welfare of the city of Seattle.

Tuition + fees

$60K

Acceptance

16%

Graduation

92%

Student body

40K

Median SAT/ACT

1445/32

The University of Southern California (USC) was founded as the first private research university in the state (five years before Stanford) largely through the efforts of Judge Robert Widney, one of the most prominent citizens of Los Angeles at that time.

Tuition + fees

$58K

Acceptance

17%

Graduation

94%

Student body

14K

Median SAT/ACT

1465/33

Georgetown University is a Catholic institution of higher learning that was founded in 1789 by John Carroll, Archbishop of Baltimore.

Tuition + fees

$59K

Acceptance

9%

Graduation

95%

Student body

19K

Median SAT/ACT

1495/34

The founding of Northwestern University was spearheaded by the physician and politician John Evans, for whom the town of Evanston, Illinois, is named. The school is a private institution whose campus lies along Lake Michigan, just north of Chicago.

Tuition + fees

$11K

Acceptance

32%

Graduation

88%

Student body

44K

Median SAT/ACT

1355/30

By rights, the University of Texas (known within Texas itself as “UT,” for short) ought to be 40 years older than it is. In 1839, the Republic of Texas officially set aside 40 acres of prime real estate in the center of the new country’s capital city, Austin, as the site for the campus of a national university. The Texas Congress also granted 288,000 acres of land, mainly in the western regions of the Republic, as a financial endowment for the future university.

Tuition + fees

$61K

Acceptance

8%

Graduation

95%

Student body

10K

Median SAT/ACT

1505/34

Brown began life as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (officially) or Rhode Island College (unofficially). It is the twelfth-oldest institution of higher learning in the US.

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$15K

Acceptance

70%

Graduation

84%

Student body

44K

Median SAT/ACT

1370/28

The University of Minnesota (UM) traces its roots to a college preparatory school established in the city of Minneapolis seven years before Minnesota entered the Union in 1858. This school closed its doors during the Civil War, but reopened in 1867.

Tuition + fees

$58K

Acceptance

17%

Graduation

93%

Student body

17K

Median SAT/ACT

1510/34

In 1900, the Scottish-born industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, donated the funds to establish a vocational college called the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, the Technical Schools’ name was changed to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT).

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$11K

Acceptance

57%

Graduation

88%

Student body

38K

Median SAT/ACT

1390/29

The University of Wisconsin was founded at the same time that the eastern part of the Wisconsin Territory became the new state of Wisconsin and entered the union. In accord with its charter, the new state university was physically located in the state capital, Madison.

In spite of dating back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the University of Edinburgh is only the fourth-oldest university in Scotland (after St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen), hence the sixth-oldest in the English-speaking world (with Oxford and Cambridge, of course, in first and second positions).

Tuition + fees

$19K

Acceptance

23%

Graduation

94%

Student body

25K

Median SAT/ACT

1430/32

The University of Virginia (UVA) was very much the personal project of the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Virginia already had a venerable and distinguished university, the College of William & Mary, which is the second-oldest in the country—founded right after Harvard—and was Jefferson’s own alma mater.

Tuition + fees

$57K

Acceptance

7%

Graduation

92%

Student body

2K

Median SAT/ACT

1545/35

The California Institute of Technology (universally known as “Caltech”) is located in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena. It was originally founded as a vocational school, but took on the complexion of an institute at the cutting edge of scientific discovery quite early in its history.

Tuition + fees

$15K

Acceptance

37%

Graduation

87%

Student body

39K

Median SAT/ACT

1370/30

The University of California, San Diego is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is the southernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California, and offers over 200 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, enrolling 31,842 undergraduate and 8,631 graduate students. The university occupies near the coast of the Pacific Ocean, with the main campus resting on approximately . UC San Diego is ranked among the best universities in the world by major college and univer...

McGill University is the direct descendent of McGill College, founded by royal charter in 1821 and largely funded by a bequest from the Scottish-born Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist, James McGill. The university took its present name in 1885.

Tuition + fees

$58K

Acceptance

20%

Graduation

89%

Student body

32K

Median SAT/ACT

1425/32

Boston University (universally known as “BU”) traces its roots to a Methodist Church training college, the Newbury Biblical Institute, founded in Newbury, Vermont, by a group of Boston-based Methodist ministers and elders. Ten years later, in 1849, the school was transferred to the much larger town (and state capital) of Concord, New Hampshire, where it operated as the Concord Biblical Institute for 20 more years. Finally, in 1869, it moved again, this time to Boston itself, under the new name of the Boston Theological Institute.

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$17K

Acceptance

63%

Graduation

86%

Student body

54K

Median SAT/ACT

1340/29

The University of Illinois began life as the Illinois Industrial University, located in the city of Urbana. Although the original intention of lawmakers and the preference of many state residents was for the new school to concentrate on vocational training, the university’s first president, John Milton Gregory, wisely insisted on offering a full spectrum of liberal arts and science courses.

Rutgers University’s full official name is Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Tuition + fees

$20K

Acceptance

64%

Graduation

84%

Student body

27K

Median SAT/ACT

1350/30

University of Pittsburgh (“Pitt”) traces its roots to the Pittsburgh Academy, a preparatory school founded in 1787, when Pittsburgh was still a frontier outpost. Defined in this way, Pitt is the oldest continuously chartered educational institution west of the Allegheny Mountains.

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$9K

Acceptance

25%

Graduation

91%

Student body

25K

Median SAT/ACT

1405/30

The University of North Carolina (UNC) system is a large network of 16 public universities with a total student enrollment of around 240,000 souls. The oldest member of the UNC system is the flagship campus in the small, centrally located town of Chapel Hill.

The wave of expansion of Homo sapiens out of its African birthplace reached the continent of Australia around 40,000 years ago, or more. However, the first visit of Europeans to the land down under did not occur until 1606, when the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon made landfall at what is now the town of Weipa on the western shore of the Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland.

With more than 40,000 students, Manchester is the largest single-site university in the United Kingdom. While it traces its roots back to the Manchester Mechanics’ Institute founded in 1824, the present university was formed by the merger of University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and Victoria University of Manchester in 2004.

Sorbonne University is a public research university in Paris, France, established in 2018 by the merger of Paris-Sorbonne University and Pierre et Marie Curie University, along with smaller institutions. The university's current legal status was introduced in 2018 but the legacy of the institution reaches back to 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de Sorbon as part of the medieval University of Paris. It is one of the most prestigious universities in Europe and the world, as of 2021, Sorbonne University's alumni and professors have won 33 Nobel Prizes, 6 Fields Medals and on...

The origins of Imperial College London (ICL) can be traced back to the Royal College of Chemistry, founded in 1845. In 1853, this school was merged with the Royal School of Mines, established two years previously.

Tuition + fees

$11K

Acceptance

80%

Graduation

80%

Student body

41K

Median SAT/ACT

1255/27

Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) was founded in 1820. It is the flagship campus of the IU System.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) was founded in 1908.

Tsinghua University was founded in 1911 as Tsinghua College. In the modern Pinyin transliteration system, the name would be written as “Qinghua”; however, the university retains the older spelling for official purposes.

The University of Melbourne is a public research university founded in 1853, the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Australia.

Tuition + fees

$12K

Acceptance

68%

Graduation

87%

Student body

56K

Median SAT/ACT

1355/30

Ohio State University (OSU) was founded in 1870 as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. Three years later, in 1873, the new school opened its doors to a small group of 24 students. In 1878, the first class of just six students graduated.

REQUEST INFO Go to Profile

Tuition + fees

$6K

Acceptance

31%

Graduation

89%

Student body

47K

Median SAT/ACT

1390/30

The University of Florida (UF) traces its roots back to East Florida Seminary, which was founded in 1853 in the town of Ocala. The seminary, which was the first publicly supported institution of higher learning in the state, relocated to the city of Gainesville in 1858.

Peking University is a major research university in Beijing, China, and a member of the elite C9 League of Chinese universities. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its first royal charter by the Guangxu Emperor. A successor of the older Guozijian Imperial College, the university's romanized name 'Peking' retains the older transliteration of 'Beijing' that has been superseded in most other contexts. Perennially ranked as one of the top academic institutions in China and the world, as of 2021, it is ranked 18th globally by QS Ranking,...

Tuition + fees

$10K

Acceptance

67%

Graduation

83%

Student body

43K

Median SAT/ACT

1315/28

Purdue University was founded in 1869 with substantial financing provided by industrialist John Purdue. Its purpose was to train students in agriculture and engineering. The school officially opened for business in 1874 and grew quickly.