Trinity College, where Clare Rees-Zimmerman will study this yearTom Porteous

For the fourth year running, the University of Cambridge has held onto its fifth place in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).

Despite reaching second place in 2005 and 2006, Cambridge has maintained a respectable position in the top five since the first publication of the ARWU in 2003. It remains the only British university in the top five.

Harvard University topped the rankings, followed by Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of California, Berkeley.

The only other British institutions to be ranked amongst the top fifty were the University of Oxford (10th), University College London (20th), Imperial College London (22nd), the University of Manchester (38th) and the University of Edinburgh (45th).

The ARWU, also known as the Shanghai Ranking, was developed by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and compares 1200 higher education institutions worldwide. Universities are judged by a formula which incorporates the number of Nobel Prize winning alumni and staff, highly cited researchers and published articles in academic journals.

Alongside the QS University Rankings and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the ARWU is one of the most influential international rankings available today. Cambridge was placed third and seventh in the QS and Times rankings respectively for 2013-14.

This international success has also led to Cambridge securing its position among the best universities in the country, as it was ranked first in the Guardian’s University League Table of British universities for 2014-15.

Cantabrigians will be overjoyed to see the University of Oxford only just scraping the top ten, taking tenth place for the ninth year in a row.

The news of Cambridge’s continuing world-class performance in international rankings is timely, considering the thousands of A-level students who fulfilled their Cambridge offers yesterday.

Notable success stories heading to Cambridge include Clare Rees-Zimmerman, from Sheffield, who is headed to Cambridge to study Natural Sciences at Trinity College, armed with nine A-levels. Rees-Zimmerman achieved A*s in eight A-levels: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Russian, Maths, Further maths, Additional further maths and Music – with an A in French. She is also a talented musician, achieving grade eight on the piano, violin and viola.