The world’s top 100 universities

In 2000, rankings of the world’s top universities were not as standardized or widely recognized as they are today. However, the most reputable lists, such as the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, were emerging around this time. Based on historical reputation and academic influence, here’s a list of some universities that were generally considered among the top 100 around 2000:

United States

1. Harvard University
2. Stanford University
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
4. California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
5. University of California, Berkeley
6. Princeton University
7. Yale University
8. University of Chicago
9. Columbia University
10. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
11. University of Michigan
12. University of Pennsylvania
13. Cornell University
14. University of Wisconsin-Madison
15. Johns Hopkins University
16. University of Washington
17. University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
18. Northwestern University
19. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
20. University of Texas at Austin
21. Duke University
22. University of Southern California (USC)
23. New York University (NYU)
24. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
25. Washington University in St. Louis

United Kingdom

1. University of Cambridge
2. University of Oxford
3. Imperial College London
4. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
5. University College London (UCL)
6. University of Edinburgh
7. University of Manchester
8. University of Bristol
9. University of Warwick
10. University of Glasgow

Canada

1. University of Toronto
2. University of British Columbia
3. McGill University
4. University of Alberta
5. University of Montreal

Europe

1. University of Paris (Sorbonne)
2. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)
3. University of Munich (LMU Munich)
4. University of Copenhagen
5. Utrecht University
6. University of Amsterdam
7. University of Heidelberg
8. Karolinska Institute
9. University of Geneva
10. Leiden University

Asia

1. University of Tokyo
2. Kyoto University
3. National University of Singapore (NUS)
4. Peking University
5. Tsinghua University
6. Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
7. University of Hong Kong
8. Seoul National University
9. Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
10. University of Melbourne

Australia

1. Australian National University (ANU)
2. University of Melbourne
3. University of Sydney
4. University of Queensland
5. University of New South Wales (UNSW)

This list reflects a mix of academic reputation, research output, and historical prestige that would have likely placed these institutions among the top in the year 2000.