UNITED STATES—UC Berkeley and UCLA have been ranked the #1 and #2 public universities in the nation, according to the Center for World University (CWUR) 2015 Rankings. UC San Diego is ranked #4 , with UC San Francisco ranked at #6.
The annual list ranks the top 1000 universities in the world, and is “the only global university ranking that measures the quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research without relying on surveys and university data submission,” according to the CWUR website.
Their methodology to determine the rankings relies on a combination of eight factors, including the number of a university’s alumni and faculty members who have won distinctive international awards and medals, the number of university research papers appearing in reputable or highly-influential journals, the number of a university’s alumni who have held CEO positions at the world’s top companies and the number of international patents filed by the university or its affiliates.
All factors are considered relative to the university’s size using a mathematical formula. A complete technical description of the CWUR’s evaluation methodology can be read here.
UC Berkeley is ranked #7, UCLA is #15, UC San Diego is #21 and UCSF is #26.
All other University of California schools made the list as well, with UC Davis at #53, UC Santa Barbara at #64, UC Irvine at #89, UC Santa Cruz at #154, UC Riverside at #214, and UC Merced at #936.
Stanford University is ranked #2 in the top 1000 universities in the world, just behind Harvard.
In 2014, the Academic Ranking of World Universities named UC Berkeley as #4, UCLA as #12, UC San Diego as #14 and UCSF as #16 in the nation for their top 500 universities list. Their 2015 rankings are scheduled to be published on August 15.
 2015 Rankings.){kind=link}