The University of Iowa ranks 121st among the world's 500 “Best Global Universities,” according to the inaugural global rankings published by the magazine U.S. News & World Report.

Iowa State University is ranked 155th, while the University of Northern Iowa is unranked. The top global ranking went to Harvard University, while MIT ranked second,and the University of California-Berkeley ranked third.

The magazine also ranked the top 100 institutions in a variety of fields. The University of Iowa ranked 57th in psychiatry/psychology, 77th in microbiology, and 91st in clinical medicine.

The U.S. News & World Report rankings are composed of 500 institutions from 49 countries and selected from a pool of 750 institutions. The rankings are based on 10 indicators and weights chosen by the magazine to measure global research performance. The indicators are: global research reputation, regional research reputation, publications, normalized citation impact, total citations, number of highly cited papers, percentage of highly cited papers, international collaboration, number of doctorates awarded, and number of doctorates awarded per academic staff member.