For the 2024-2025 Global University Visibility (GUV) rankings, we present our largest ranking set to date, covering universities in more than 65 countries and spanning every region of the world. 

“7 out of 10 students and parents say institutional brand and name recognition are essential to their college search”

The GUV ranking employs an innovative first-of-its-kind methodology to score university brand visibility by measuring how effectively each institution communicates its story to the world. The ranking methodology was issued a U.S. copyright © in 2024.

The calculation for the brand visibility score is based on four primary performance indicators, each weighted at different levels:

• News Mentions: Coverage in newspapers, TV, and radio over the past 12 months.
• Public Interest: Monthly Google searches for the university.
• Website Visits: Monthly traffic to the university's main site.
• Social Media: Total number of followers across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Here are the top 10 Most Visible Universities in the World:

1. Harvard University - 69.5 million
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology - 53.8 million
3. Stanford University - 31 million
4. Columbia University - 29.5 million (⬆5)
5. University of Oxford - 24.2 million (⬆2)
6. Cornell University - 22 million (⬇2)
7. University of Cambridge - 21.2 million (⬆9)
8. Universidade de São Paulo - 21 million (⬆3)
9. Purdue University - 20 million (⬆1)
10. King Saud University - 19 million (New)

The top spot continues to be Harvard University by a large margin, followed by MIT comfortably in 2nd place. Stanford University maintains its 3rd position for the second year while Columbia University jumped up 5 places into 4th.

The British heavyweights Oxford and Cambridge both increased their visibility positions by two and nine spots respectively. Meanwhile, Cornell University, which fell to 6th, is one of three Ivy League institutions in the Top 10. 

Brazil's Universidade de São Paulo, one of the largest universities in South America, secured the 8th spot. The top American public institution on the list this year, Purdue University, improved one position to 9th place.

New to the list is King Saud University from Saudi Arabia, which has seen massive investments across numerous sectors. 

The most improved brand visibility score is from the University of Texas at Dallas, which jumped over 100 spots from last year's rankings.

Overall, 88% of universities on the index increased their visibility over the past year, while only 11% saw a decrease, and a few maintained their previous levels.

Explore the Global University Visibility (GUV) rankings for 2024-2025.