hey OP, you ranked these by "scientific impact" (per publication in journals) and then defined journal as basically any journal instead of top 1% journal or top 10% journal.

Was that your intention? Because it's a bit odd lens for humanities undergrad. But much better lens if considering joining the faculty and want to publish a lot - to anywhere at all

Anonymous wrote:And strange that Stanford is so high on the list, when everything I’ve heard from humanities professors there is that they feel like second class citizens.

Stanford is a leader in many social science and humanities fields. Should be surprising to absolutely no one.

And strange that Stanford is so high on the list, when everything I’ve heard from humanities professors there is that they feel like second class citizens.

Really funny that Yale is at the bottom, when their entire existence is predicated on being good at the humanities.

Anonymous wrote:It just goes to show that there are many different ways you can rank universities and "perceived prestige" based on USNWR alone or parents' and friend group popularity are all super subjective.

I never see universities like WUSTL on these global lists (but I do see UW Seattle). U of Toronto smokes most ivies. Vanderbilt and Brown are nowhere.

Yeah, but there are other things that aren’t just perceived prestige. Any social science list that doesn’t have Princeton, Berkeley, LSE, Chicago somewhere near the top has missed the mark. They have some of the best faculty in the world and resources for these subjects.

It just goes to show that there are many different ways you can rank universities and "perceived prestige" based on USNWR alone or parents' and friend group popularity are all super subjective.

I never see universities like WUSTL on these global lists (but I do see UW Seattle). U of Toronto smokes most ivies. Vanderbilt and Brown are nowhere.

And this is the Top 25 filtering just for North American universities (Social Sciences & Humanities):

1
Harvard Univ United States

2
Univ Toronto Canada

3
Univ Michigan United States

4
NYU United States

5
Penn State Univ United States

6
Univ Penn United States

7
Columbia Univ United States

8
Stanford Univ United States

9
Univ Texas - Austin United States

10
Ohio State Univ United States

11
Univ California - Los Angeles United States

12
Arizona State Univ United States

13
Univ Minnesota - Twin Cities United States

14
Univ British Columbia Canada

15
Michigan State Univ United States

16
Univ Washington - Seattle United States

17
Yale Univ United States

18
Univ Wisconsin - Madison United States

19
Rutgers - State Univ New Jersey United States

20
Univ N Carolina - Chapel Hill United States

21
Univ California - Berkeley United States

22
Johns Hopkins Univ United States

23
Univ South California United States

24
Northwestern Univ United States

25
McGill Univ Canada

This list started okay and then went off the rails quickly.

The Leiden Rankings are out for all disciplines. Since my DC is interested in social sciences, I thought it would be interesting to post their rankings specifically for social sciences & humanities, since it's hard to find rankings that aren't generalized across all subjects:

Top 20 Global Unis - Social Sciences & Humanities:

1. Harvard
2. University of Toronto
3. University College London
4. Oxford
5. University of Michigan
6. University of Melbourne
7. NYU
8. Penn State
9. Cambridge
10. Monash Univ
11. U Penn
12. Amsterdam
13. Columbia
14. Univ of Sydney
15. Stanford
16. UT Austin
17. Ohio State
18. UCLA
19. Arizona State
20. University Hong Kong
21. University Queensland
22. University of Minnesota
23. University of British Columbia (UBC)
24. Beijing
25. Michigan State
26. King's College London
27. Univ Utrecht
28. UW (Seattle)
29. Univ N. South Wales
30. Yale

If you want to see rankings by sciences or other disciplines, you can filter them on this link below:
https://traditional.leidenranking.com/ranking/2025/list