Not only does Melbourne have fantastic restaurants and bars, as well as a world-class cultural scene, but it turns out that we’ve also got plenty of smarts, too. An esteemed ranking of the best universities in the world for 2025 has just dropped, and one of the top 20 was right here in our city.
No prizes for guessing, but The University of Melbourne shone on the global stage and claimed the title of Australia’s highest-ranked university for 2025. It climbed one spot since last year – and a remarkable 20 spots since 2023 – securing a commendable 13th place overall. This ranking marks a historic high for the oldest university in our city, adding to its growing list of accolades in 2024. Notably, all 53 of its subjects featured in the QS World University Rankings by Subject top 100, with 20 subjects ranking in the top 25. Monash University came in at a (still impressive) 37th spot on the list, as the only other university in Melbourne to make the top 100.
There were 38 Australian universities reviewed in total, and nine landed in the top 100, with six cracking the top 50 on the global list. After tying in 19th place last year, The University of Sydney edged out The University of New South Wales (UNSW) to clinch 18th spot, narrowly surpassing UNSW’s 19th place. It’s also worth mentioning that The University of Sydney ranked as Australia’s most sustainable university, maintaining its impressive seventh-place global ranking out of more than 1,500 universities worldwide. Canberra’s Australian National University once reigned as Australia’s top university, but it was overtaken in the QS World University Rankings in 2023, now ranking as the fourth-best in Australia and 30th globally for 2025.
Other Aussie universities to place in the top 100 included The University of Queensland (40th), The University of Western Australia (77th), The University of Adelaide (82nd) and the University of Technology Sydney (88th). That's a commendable effort nationwide.
Now in its 21st year, the QS World University Rankings are a trusty source for comparing more than 1,500 educational institutions from 106 locations worldwide. QS compiles these rankings by gathering intel from almost 250,000 academic faculty and employers and skimming through 17.5 million academic papers. For the first time this year, they also took notes on each university’s sustainability efforts, employer reputation and international research network.
Here is the full list of the top 20 universities in the world for 2025:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States
- Imperial College London, United Kingdom
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- Harvard University, United States
- University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Stanford University, United States
- ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland
- National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
- UCL (University College London), United Kingdom
- California Institute of Technology (Caltech), United States
- University of Pennsylvania, United States
- University of California, Berkeley (UCB), United States
- University of Melbourne, Australia
- Peking University, Mainland China
- Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU), Singapore
- Cornell University, United States
- University of Hong Kong (UKU), Hong Kong SAR
- University of Sydney, Australia
- University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), Australia
- Tsinghua University, Mainland China
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