The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. Photo courtesy of MIT

Overall, only four countries were represented in the top 10: the U.S., the U.K., Singapore, and China.

U.S. and Singaporean institutions dominated the field, occupying all five top positions.

Stanford University placed second, followed by National University of Singapore in third. Nanyang Technological University and Carnegie Mellon University completed the top five.

The QS rankings, compiled annually by Quacquarelli Symonds, assess universities using five indicators: academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper, research productivity and impact, and international research collaboration.

The 2026 edition, released in March, evaluated more than 21,000 academic programs across 1,912 institutions in 100 countries and territories.

University of Oxford in the U.K. shared sixth place with U.S.'s University of California, Berkeley.

Harvard University ranked eighth, followed by University of Cambridge.

Tsinghua University was the only Chinese institution in the top 10, placing tenth and marking its first appearance in the QS ranking for data science and AI.

Here are top 10 universities for data science and AI in the QS 2026 ranking: