Harvard University received the highest score in the U.S. News & World Report's "2018 Global University Rankings." As American universities swept the top rankings, American public universities became more prominent.

According to the U.S. News & World Report, an American media outlet that specializes in college rankings, Harvard University ranked 1st in their global university evaluation, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley. Among the top 10 universities (with 3 schools sharing 10th place), there are 10 American universities and 2 universities in the UK, including Oxford University (5th place) and Cambridge University (7th place).

The strength of American universities is already known, but notably, 6 American public universities, including UC Berkeley and the University of Washington (10th place), ranked among the top 20 schools. The evaluation was conducted on 1250 famous universities in 74 countries. By country, there were 221 American universities, 136 Chinese universities, 76 Japanese universities, 73 British universities, and 58 German universities.

American universities also placed 1st in most of the 22 major field rankings. China's Tsinghua University (64th place overall) ranked 1st in the field of computer science and engineering, showing rapid development in Chinese higher education. In Asia, the National University of Singapore ranked 43rd, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore ranked 55th, the University of Tokyo in Japan ranked 57th, and Peking University in China ranked 65th. In Korea, Seoul National University ranked 123rd, KAIST ranked 198th, Sungkyunkwan University ranked 200th, and Korea University ranked 274th.

The U.S News & World Report says, "Rankings are determined based on Clarivate Analytics' science and technology analysis service, universities' global research reputation, publications and conference performance, etc."