The two countries shared the top 13 universities, with the United States leading the way with 33 universities in the top 100.

Britain was second with 15, while Australia and the Netherlands were next with seven each.

Switzerland and France followed with five, while Hong Kong, Japan, Canada and Germany each had three.

China and India, the world's two most populous countries, had two apiece, along with Singapore, New Zealand and Belgium. Denmark, South Korea, Mexico, Ireland, Austria and Russia all had one university in the top 100.

Harvard University in Massachusetts topped the poll, with Cambridge and Oxford in England coming second and third.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University tied for fourth, with Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology ranking sixth and seventh.

The University of California at Berkeley was eighth, Imperial College London was ninth, and Princeton University completed the top 10.

The highest-ranking Asian university was Beijing University, coming in at 15th - also the highest rank for a non-US or British institution.

Australian National University was Australia's best at 16th, while France's Ecole Normale Superieure was continental Europe's best at 18th.

The rankings were compiled by asking 3,703 academics worldwide to name the 30 best universities for research in their field of expertise, along with responses from 736 graduate employers globally, along with the ratio of faculty to students, and the university's ability to draw foreign students and world-renowned academics.

The results were then weighted and transformed into a scale giving the top university a score of 100, with all subsequent institutions scoring a proportion of that score.

The top 25 universities:

1) Harvard University (US)

2) University of Cambridge (Britain)

3) University of Oxford (Britain)

4) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)

4) Yale University (US)

6) Stanford University (US)

7) California Institute of Technology (US)

8) University of California at Berkeley (US)

9) Imperial College London (Britain)

10) Princeton University (US)

11) University of Chicago (US)

12) Columbia University (US)

13) Duke University (US)

14) Beijing University (China)

15) Cornell University (US)

16) Australian National University (Australia)

17) London School of Economics (Britain)

18) Ecole Normale Superieure (France)

19) National University of Singapore (Singapore)

19) University of Tokyo (Japan)

21) McGill University (Canada)

22) University of Melbourne (Australia)

23) Johns Hopkins University (US)

24) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Switzerland)

25) University College London (UK)

Selected universities in the top 100:

33) University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)

46) University of Auckland (New Zealand)

54) University of Copenhagen (Denmark)

57) Indian Institute of Technology (India)

58) Universitaet Heidelberg (Germany)

63) Seoul National University (South Korea)

67) Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands)

74) University Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (Mexico)

76) Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium)

78) Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)

87) University of Vienna (Austria)

93) Moscow State University (Russia)