Although CalTech’s 8th place finish on the QS ranking this year is a more than respectable showing, it doesn’t hold a candle to the Pasadena school’s performance on the Times Higher Education list of top global universities, which it has topped for the last three years running. This year, CalTech earned the distinction of being the top ranked university in the world for its ratio of academic citations to faculty members on the QS list.

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Professor Harvey Newman, seated, an expert on experimental high energy physics, is joined by students and researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.