QS World University Rankings: Geophysics

According to the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025, nearly 250 universities worldwide offer outstanding programs in geophysics. Similar to last year, ETH Zurich continues to hold the top position in this field. The University of Oxford has overtaken the University of Cambridge for second place, though Cambridge remains firmly in the top three. Interestingly, the rest of the top 10 universities are all elite institutions in the United States, reflecting the country’s continued emphasis on research and innovation in earth sciences.

The following table lists over 60 globally ranked universities for pursuing geophysics, along with their location.

1. ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology – Switzerland
2. University of Oxford – United Kingdom
3. Harvard University – United States of America
4. California Institute of Technology (Caltech) – United States of America
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – United States of America
6. University of Cambridge – United Kingdom
7. Columbia University – United States of America
8. University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – United States of America
9. University of Washington – United States of America
10. Stanford University – United States of America
11. University of Colorado Boulder – United States of America
12. Princeton University – United States of America
13. Delft University of Technology – Netherlands
14. University of Leeds – United Kingdom
15. Peking University – China (Mainland)
16. The University of Tokyo – Japan
17. Utrecht University – Netherlands
18. Tsinghua University – China (Mainland)
19. Wuhan University – China (Mainland)
20. Imperial College London – United Kingdom
21. University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – United States of America
22. The Australian National University – Australia
23. Université Grenoble Alpes – France
24. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – United States of America
25. Nanjing University – China (Mainland)
26. UCL – United Kingdom
27. Sorbonne University – France
28. University of Texas at Austin – United States of America
29. University of British Columbia – Canada
30. University of Toronto – Canada
31. The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) – Australia
32. Yale University – United States of America
33. The University of Edinburgh – United Kingdom
34. Wageningen University & Research – Netherlands
35. The University of Melbourne – Australia
36. Pennsylvania State University – United States of America
37. McGill University – Canada
38. University of Bristol – United Kingdom
39. Texas A&M University – United States of America
40. University of Maryland, College Park – United States of America
41. Cornell University – United States of America
42. Curtin University – Australia
43. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) – Singapore
44. Université PSL – France
45. Colorado State University – United States of America
46. The University of Hong Kong – Hong Kong SAR, China
47. The University of Queensland – Australia
48. The University of Arizona – United States of America
49. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences – China (Mainland)
50. Arizona State University – United States of America
51. Beijing Normal University – China (Mainland)
52. China University of Geosciences – China (Mainland)
53. Christian-Albrechts-University zu Kiel – Germany
54. Durham University – United Kingdom
55. EPFL – Switzerland
56. Georgia Institute of Technology – United States of America
57. Ghent University – Belgium
58. Johns Hopkins University – United States of America
59. KIT, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology – Germany
60. KU Leuven – Belgium
61. Kyoto University – Japan
62. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München – Germany
63. Lund University – Sweden
64. Monash University – Australia
65. Newcastle University – United Kingdom
66. Seoul National University – Republic of Korea
67. Stockholm University – Sweden
68. Sun Yat-sen University – China (Mainland)
69. Technical University of Denmark – Denmark

Overall, the above-mentioned rankings display the global universities in geophysics education and research. Whether in Europe or the United States, students who aspire to pursue a career related to the understanding of the processes that shape the Earth can refer to these rankings to know about some excellent programs at these prestigious universities. If you choose your university from this list, you can expect not only a strong academic experience, but also gain access to potential future career opportunities across the globe.