It's official — the world's top university is Cal Tech

London-based Times Higher Education (THE) published its 12th annual World University Rankings Wednesday, and while American schools as a whole have lost some of the mojo they’ve showed in past years, they continue to dominate.

Six of the top 10 slots for 2015-16, in fact, are schools in the U.S. 
According to the rankings, these are the top 10 schools in the world:

1. California Institute of Technology
2. Oxford University in the U.K.
3. Stanford University
4. Cambridge in the U.K.
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. Harvard University
7. Princeton University
8. Imperial College London
9. ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
10. University of Chicago

This is the fifth consecutive year that Cal Tech secured the top spot.
Johns Hopkins University, Yale University and University of California at Berkeley all placed high in the rankings at Nos. 11, 12 and 13, respectively.
THE, a higher-education news source, uses 13 performance indicators when evaluating colleges around the world. These include the international staff-to-international student ratio, and “research excellence  assessed through the examination of more than 11 million research papers,” according to the study.
While many U.S. schools ranked high on the list — and has the most universities in the rankings, with 147 schools making the top 800 — it only had 63 schools in the top 200 this year compared to last year’s 74.
Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, said in a statement that other countries are making gains in higher education.
“The United States still dominates the World University Rankings.(But) despite this achievement, the US will have to watch out for countries in continental Europe, such as Germany and the Netherlands, and Asia, such as China, that may threaten its status in years to come,” the statement read.
“While 47 states in the US have implemented higher education funding cuts since the recession in 2008, including California, which cut its university system’s budget by $900 million, or 27 percent, these standout performers in Europe and Asia are continuing to invest heavily in higher education. The US will have to raise its game to ensure its dominance does not erode.”
The top three-ranked schools in Asia are the National University of Singapore at No. 26, Peking University in China at No.42, and University of Tokyo in Japan at No. 43.
800 universities from 70 countries are ranked this year, and 400 universities from 41 countries were ranked last year.