The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) has released the 2017 edition of its subject rankings. This involves examining top global universities in the various subjects that cover all academic disciplines in the sciences and social sciences.
There are 227 subjects all in all. In its official website, CWUR reported that Harvard University topped the list worldwide. The Ivy League school was able to achieve top 10 placements in 112 subjects, including 72 top places.
The University of Toronto, based in Canada, came in second place with 66 top 10 subjects. It is followed by U.S. institutions: the University of Michigan with 57 top 10 subjects, the University of Pennsylvania with 54 top 10 subjects, Johns Hopkins University which scored 51, the University of California - Berkeley which scored 50 and Stanford University with 48.
The University of Oxford got eighth place with 47 top 10 subjects. It is the only U.K. institution that got in the top 10 list.
The University of Washington (UW) came in ninth place, with 45 top subjects. Seattle Times reported that 45 academic disciplines offered by UW were ranked in the top 10 among universities around the world.
Social work was the highest scoring UW program. This was ranked as the best in the world. Oceanography as well as audiology and speech language pathology were ranked second worldwide. Biomedical research methods, medical informatics, microbiology and virology all ranked third.
Other UW areas of study that ranked in the top 10 were (in no particular order): acoustics, anatomy and morphology, anesthesiology, biotechnology and applied microbiology, critical care medicine, emergency medicine, endocrinology and metabolism, family studies, fisheries, genetics and heredity, geosciences and heredity, gerontology, hematology, immunology as well as applied and clinical psychology, among others.
Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came in 10th place in the world rankings. Other top 5 European institutions that made CWUR's list were the University of Cambridge, University College London, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University in France.
