Cornell University ranks as the 14th-best university in the world, up from 23rd last year, according to the second annual World University Rankings by the Times Higher Education Supplement published by The Times of London.

Cornell also ranked 11th in the world in science -- with Cambridge University (1), Oxford University (2) and University of California-Berkeley (3) leading that category -- and 16th in social sciences, 26th in biomedicine and 34th in technology.

The top three universities in the world, according to the report, are Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge.

The report ranks what The Times considers to be the world's top 200 universities. While the list traverses higher education institutions in 31 countries, all but two were in North America, Europe or Asia. The United States was home to 54 of the top universities, the United Kingdom 24 and Australia 17.

To determine rankings, the Times surveyed 2,375 academics worldwide on their selections of top universities and programs and combined the results with such factors as the number of times published research papers were cited by colleagues, staff-to-student ratios and the number of students and faculty recruited from overseas. The rankings also take into account which universities international employers prefer to recruit from.

While this year's rankings were arrived at using a similar methodology as in 2004, improvements include a bigger poll of academics, more complete statistics and the addition to the survey of global employment recruiters.