The 2010 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) is released Sunday by the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Starting from 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world top 500 universities annually based on a set of objective indicators and third-party data. ARWU has been recognized as the precursor of global university rankings and one of the most influential lists.

US still dominates 2010 list with 8 universities in the top 10 and 54 universities in the top 100. Harvard University remains the No. 1 in the world for the eighth year, followed by Berkeley and Stanford. MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Columbia, Chicago also appear in top 10 as in 2009.

The best ranked UK universities are Cambridge (5th) and Oxford (10th), other well placed European universities include: ETH Zurich (23rd) and University of Zurich (51st) in Switzerland, Paris 6 (39th) and Paris 11 (45th) in France, Copenhagen (40th) and Aarhus (98th) in Denmark, Karolinska (42nd) and Uppsala (66th) in Sweden, Utrecht (50th) and Leiden (70th) in Netherlands, Munich (52nd) and TU Munich (56th) in Germany, Helsinki (72nd) in Finland, Moscow (74th) in Russia, Oslo (75th) in Norway, and Ghent (90th) in Belgium.

106 universities from Asia-Pacific region are ranked among top 500 in 2010, among them the leaders are: Tokyo (20th) and Kyoto (24th) in Japan, ANU (59th) and Melbourne (62nd) in Australia, and Hebrew University of Jerusalem (72nd) in Israel. While the ranking methodology has been kept the same, the number of top 500 Chinese universities reaches 34 in 2010, which is more than doubled of that in 2004 (16), with National Taiwan University, Peking, Tsinghua, and Chinese University of Hong Kong ranked among top 200. Universities in Middle East countries are making significant progress, King Saud University and King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals of Saudi Arabia first enters into top 400 and top 500 respectively, Istanbul University in Turkey and University of Teheran in Iran are very close to top 400.

The world's top 100 universities on the ARWU 2010 list:

Rank        University

1               Harvard University

2               University of California, Berkeley

3               Stanford University

4               Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

5               University of Cambridge

6               California Institute of Technology

7               Princeton University

8               Columbia University

9               University of Chicago

10             University of Oxford

11             Yale University

12             Cornell University

13             University of California, Los Angeles

14             University of California, San Diego

15             University of Pennsylvania

16             University of Washington

17             University of Wisconsin - Madison

18             The Johns Hopkins University

18             University of California, San Francisco

20             The University of Tokyo

21             University College London

22             University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

23             Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

24             Kyoto University

25             University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

26             The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine

27             University of Toronto

28             University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

29             Northwestern University

30             Washington University in St. Louis

31             New York University

32            University of California, Santa Barbara

32            University of Colorado at Boulder

34             Rockefeller University

35             Duke University

36             University of British Columbia

36             University of Maryland, College Park

38             The University of Texas at Austin

39             Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris 6

40             University of Copenhagen

41             University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

42             Karolinska Institute

43             Pennsylvania State University - University Park

44             The University of Manchester

45             University of Paris Sud (Paris 11)

46             University of California, Davis

46             University of California, Irvine

46             University of Southern California

49             The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

50             Utrecht University

51             University of Zurich

52             University of Munich

53             Vanderbilt University

54             Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick

54             The University of Edinburgh

56             Technical University Munich

56             University of Pittsburgh

58             Carnegie Mellon University

59             The Australian National University

59             The Ohio State University - Columbus

61             McGill University Americas

62             University of Melbourne

63             King's College London

63             University of Heidelberg

65             Brown University

66             University of Bristol

66             Uppsala University

68             University of Florida

69             Purdue University - West Lafayette

70             Leiden University

71             Ecole Normale Superieure - Paris

72             The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

72             University of Helsinki

74             Moscow State University

75             Osaka University

75             University of Oslo

77             Boston University

78             University of Arizona

79             Stockholm University

79             Nagoya University

81             Arizona State University - Tempe

82             University of Rochester

82             University of Utah

84             Tohoku University

84             University of Nottingham

86              Michigan State University

86             University of Basel

88             McMaster University

88             The University of Sheffield

90             Ghent University

90             Indiana University Bloomington

92             University of Sydney

93             University of Bonn

93             University of Goettingen

95             Texas A&M University - College Station

96             University of Virginia

97             Case Western Reserve University

98             University of Aarhus

99             Rice University

99             University of Birmingham