By Roger Ochoa. Which is better: Harvard or Yale?
To answer this question, one might be tempted to refer to the U.S. News & World Report "Best Colleges" ranking. The perennial list arguably is the most popular among the sundry publications ranking America's colleges and universities. It does make for seductive reading. A single publication can help students and parents can make key decisions about their futures in higher education. To be sure, the pitfalls are many. More...

At the top there were few surprises. The California Institute of Technology  (Caltech) remains in first place followed by Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and Cambridge (up from seventh place last year) while Yale has joined Imperial College London in ninth place, pushing Chicago out of the top ten.
In general, Asian universities have continued to make steady progress, while European and North American institutions have slipped, with some such as the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Texas at Dallas falling out of the top 200 altogether. In contrast, Australian universities have continued to improve.
One interesting aspect of the latest rankings is the rise of Turkish universities. The Middle East Technical University is now in 85th place, up from 223rd last year, Bogazici University 139th    (199th in 2013), Istanbul Technical University 165th (212th in 2013), Sabanci University 182nd, and Bilkent University in the 201- 225 band (201 -225 band in 2013).  This was due in large part to improvements in the scores for citations, which measure global research influence.
Source
Times Higher Education. More...