Harvard Is No Longer the World’s Best School — On One List, at Least

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Steve Dunwell

Harvard has toppled off its lofty perch. On Thursday, Times Higher Education (THE) published its annual list of the world’s best colleges, and there’s a new frontrunner in the game. California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, snagged the top spot, beating the Harvard Crimson in a geeky, intellectual Ph.D. face-off.

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Relegated to second place, Harvard actually shares the spot with Stanford. The rest of the list is mainly dominated by other U.S. and British institutions, with only two appearances from other countries in the top 20 (namely, Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology and Canada’s University of Toronto).

It is the first time in eight years that Harvard isn’t numero uno, but hey, there’s always next year.

The world’s top 10 universities:

  1. California Institute of Technology
  2. Harvard University / Stanford University
  3. University of Oxford
  4. Princeton University
  5. University of Cambridge
  6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  7. Imperial College
  8. University of Chicago
  9. University of California, Berkeley

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Erica Ho is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @ericamho and Google+. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.