U.S. News & World Report ranks Cal State Fullerton among its Best Global Universities in 2025-26 for its research focusing on social sciences and public health. For the 11th year, the Best Global Universities ranking measures institutions’ academic research and reputations.
This year’s ranking includes the top 2,250 universities from 105 countries. The ranking measures schools’ overall academic research and reputation, instead of their specific undergraduate or graduate programs.
For social sciences and public health research, CSUF is named among the best global universities at No. 700. U.S. News says this research includes such topics as social policy, political science, education, demographics, law, and public health and administration, as well as research dealing with ethics and the social aspects of health and addiction.
Overall, CSUF ranks at No. 1,028 in 2025-26, moving up from its No. 1,067 ranking the previous year. CSUF’s strongest scores were in the areas of “regional research reputation” at No. 243 and “percentage of highly cited papers that are among the top 1% most cited” at No. 285.
U.S. News ranks the top universities in five regions — Africa, Asia, Australia/New Zealand, Europe and Latin America — and 51 separate subject rankings.
In its methodology for universities’ overall rankings, U.S. News used data and metrics by Clarivate to consider schools’ global and regional reputation. U.S. News also measured schools’ academic research performance using such indicators as publications, citations and highly cited papers.
For its separate subject rankings, U.S. News used separate methodologies based on schools’ campuswide academic research performance in each subject.