The 15 most influential universities in the world

Location: PhiladelphiaTuition: $49,220Notable alumni: American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, Tesla and SpaceX's Elon Musk, and American business magnate Warren BuffettLocation: Ann Arbor, MichiganTuition: $15,897 (in-state) Notable alumni: Google co-founder Larry Page, American playwright Arthur Miller, and American mathematician Claude ShannonLocation: Oxford, England Tuition: £9,250 (about $12,000) for UK students Notable alumni: American media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Lord of the Rings author J.R.R Tolkien, and Medieval philosopher Roger BaconLocation: Ithaca, New YorkTuition: $54,584Notable alumni: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, American writer Kurt Vonnegut, and American mathematician Norbert WienerLocation: New York, New York Tuition: $49,256Notable alumni: Polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk, Austrian and British economist Friedrich Hayek, and actress Angelina JolieLocation: Cambridge, England Tuition: £9,250 (about $12,000) for UK students, approximately £25,00 ($32,000) for international studentsNotable alumni: British naturalist Charles Darwin, English philosopher Francis Bacon, and American economist Milton Friedman Location: Chicago, Illinois Tuition: $55,425 Notable alumni: American economist and Nobel-prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, molecular biologist and geneticist James Watson, and astrophysicist Carl SaganLocation: Princeton, New Jersey Tuition: $49,450 Notable alumni: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald, and British mathematician and logician Alan TuringLocation: New Haven, ConnecticutTuition: $53,430Notable alumni: US federal judge Richard Posner, American economist Paul Krugman, paleontologist George Gaylord SimpsonLocation: Berkeley, CaliforniaTuition: $11,442 (in-state) Notable alumni: Call of the Wild author Jack London, evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, and The Feminine Mystique author Betty FriedanLocation: New York, New York Tuition: $50,665Notable alumni: US founding father Alexander Hamilton, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and poet Allen GinsbergLocation: Cambridge, Massachusetts Tuition: $51,520Notable alumni: American linguist Noam Chomsky, German-American nuclear physicist Hans Bethe, and American physicist Murray Gell-Mann Location: Stanford, California Tuition: $50,703Notable alumni: Astronaut and physicist Sally Ride, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter ThielLocation: LondonTuition: Varies based on program of studyNotable alumni: English writer H.G. Wells, telephone inventor and scientist Alexander Graham Bell, and Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts Tuition: $46,340Notable alumni: Microsoft founder Bill Gates, French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson

The 15 most influential universities in the world

15. University of Pennsylvania

14. University of Michigan

13. University of Oxford

12. Cornell University

11. New York University

10. University of Cambridge

9. University of Chicago

8. Princeton University

7. Yale University

6. University of California, Berkeley

5. Columbia University

4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

3. Stanford University

2. University of London

1. Harvard University